The Art of the Trades | Mary’s Farm

When pipes freeze and other calamities occur, a hero is someone with a wrench and knowhow. Last New Year’s Eve, I bought a new car, something I do every 10 years or so. Two days later, I had to drive three hours north, to the White Mountains, to teach a workshop. In a blizzard. Baptism by fire. The car charged through it like a filly heading for green pastures. I passed accidents along the way, but I arrived without incident and felt lucky to be only a couple of hours late. The hotel was a grand historic structure from the Victorian age, restored to keep the feeling of the old while offering the luxury of the new. The car was whisked from me on arrival and put into a valet parking lot. In the morning, I took in the breathtaking view of the Presidential Range, which seemed to advance outward in every direction. Two or three days later, temperatures were forecast to plummet as low as 30 to 40 below zero. Maintenance men were on their knees in the hallways, applying blowtorches to frozen pipes. I called a friend at home to ask her to please check on my house. Her report was what I feared: The pipes were frozen. I called Glenn, my plumber, who has always been there for me at times like this. This time was no exception. He went right over. Yes, he told me by cell phone, the pipes were frozen and cracked and needed to be replaced. He set right to the task, and by the end of the day, everything was in order. People know that this isn’t what usually happens when temperatures fall below zero. Finding a plumber then who might be available is like looking for a ripe, sun-warmed tomato in the dead of winter. Over the years, I’ve had two plumbers. The first one was Dan, whose wife was a friend of mine. They’d met in college, both of them art majors. While in college, Dan worked as a plumber’s assistant to help pay his way through school. When he got out of school, he kept on plumbing. The pay was good. He never returned to the art, but his work became his art, pipes aligned and plumb and tidily labeled. People noticed. After a while, he was in such demand that I couldn’t get him, so I switched to Glenn, who once worked for Dan and whose work was just as lovely. But I wonder what it’s like for an artist to labor in obscurity like that, the result of his work hidden behind a wall. Eventually, Dan’s wife, who had a career as a graphic artist, joined Dan in his business and now goes out on calls with him, leaving her art behind the way Dan did. Apparently, art is a dangerous profession. A friend of mine, who once taught English and drama to high-school students, tells me that he used to counsel his students to be able to find a job in the trades, even despite high aspirations. “Something to fall back on,” he says. Is there a lesson here? Arriving home from the White Mountains in my eager new car, I managed to back into my porch, a sickening crunch in the dark of a moonless night. In the morning, I called Michael, another artist in the trades who’s there to help when I need him. In time, the porch, too, was fixed: an erasure of the fact of my late-night miscalculation. At the time, it all felt catastrophic, a lightning bolt from God, but in retrospect, everything has been restored, as if nothing had ever happened. I don’t know whether there’s a lesson here, but certainly a reason for me to be grateful. Edie Clark’s latest book is What There Was Not to Tell: A Story of Love and War. Order your copy, as well as Edie’s other works, at: YankeeMagazine.com/store or edieclark.com

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