Have you ever had a best friend as a kid that you managed to have so many adventures with, get into so much trouble with, that the two of you could only be described as partners in crime? I had a friend like that once, my partner in crime, Mr. Goode.
Mr. Goode could do an unforgettable imitation of Andy Rooney complaining about having to waddle across the bathroom floor with his pants around his ankles when he ran out of toilet paper. When I was in the hospital, it was Mr. Goode who smuggled me in a pizza and the pet ducks we liberated that summer from the local swamp and,of course, Mr. Goode knew every line from all the best Monty Python skits.
There was one summer that Mr. Goode and I got gophering jobs for a contractor on the Island. I think we called him Snert. We spent each day damaging drywall, bending nails and generally causing about twice as much damage as we did getting things done, but hey, it was a paying gig. And anyway it was Snert's problem for hiring us.
Snert had this vicious, deep, sickening cough, in doubling over fits of convulsions. I think he chain smoked too. He would then use the most toxic, caustic materials, adhesives, lacquers & deadly fumes without ANY respirator or mask, & when WE would put one on he would say "Oh you don't need that, the fumes never bother me"...and he would say that, all the time. Famous last words. I'm certain he's pushing up daisies by now. I always think of that, how incredibly foolish he was. After all, he hired us.
On one particular day, Snert, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to let us use the jack hammer to bust up an old driveway. We did ok until it came time to pick ax away a bit of earth below the cement. Mr. Goode swung the pick and on the first hit managed to hit a plastic casing pipe for the main electrical line to the house. Well, nobody got electrocuted so it was a pretty good day. And hey, we knew that you never leave power lines exposed to moisture so, being honest young lads we immediately fixed it by tossing a broken piece of ceramic pipe over the hand sized hole. We then buried it up real quick with loose dirt before any water could get in and went on to the next task with our quality work ethics intact. Once the cement driveway was re-poured over the dirt above it that week we knew everything would be ok. So the next day Snert sends us out to the side yard to dig a trench. I can't recall if this was before or after our daily dark beer lunch. Huge bottles.....It definitely wasn't the day that Snert showed us how to settle a toilet onto its wax seal by sitting backwards on the seat and humping the toilet with an abandon and gusto that caused us to pull a stomach muscle each.
It was a sunny day. I remember that. I remember us laughing and joking about how we really shouldn't be trusted with pick axes. I also remember the first swing Mr. Goode took; a truly beautiful, high arcing swing. The kind of swing that baseball players and golf pros take when they make a play that people talk about for years...'Boy! Did you see that swing? Now that's a swing!....' Indeed it was. It was his first swing of the day. It arced, it swished, it popped.... Popped....it shouldn't have popped. Mr. Goode had stopped, pick ax tip in the ground, he lifted his gaze to mine with a surprised smile on his face as if to say, 'Oh...No....' and in a moment worthy of Larry, Curley or even Moe, he pulled the pick up out of the ground. As Mr. Goode put it years later, “…the pick didn't make that solid sound when it went into the ground---rather a soft, semi-hollow crunchy squishy sound, as if you'd broke into a gooey duck or something....It just didn't feel right. Out of the entire hillside, what are the chances we hit that pipe dead center with the first swing? WHAT ARE THE CHANCES??? If we could do that why couldn't we win the lotto instead?”
Now, I'm not saying that random damage to someone's home is funny. I'm saying it's freaking hilarious! When Mr. Goode pulled out that pick, the water shot up like an oil well in Texas. What a gusher! We ran around looking for the shut off, which of course we didn't find for hours. Everybody on the site had to stop what they were doing and let's just say nobody was real impressed. We didn't work there very much longer after that. And as I recall, Snert was pretty mad and shouted a lot at both of us. But it's hard, you know, to take a man seriously after you've watched him backwards hump a toilet...
