The Handyman Can (Cigar Smoke 2-25-10)

Is it just me or do things like this happen to you, and I don’t know if things like this don’t happen to you because you don’t have a column, or is it that these things may happen to you but you don’t give a flying fraguzzi, and I do give one of those?

Anyway, I’m up in my little Hovel by the Sea in Oregon last week and I need to do some work on my so-called house. I have to hang a large clock on the wall and I know from experience that if I do it myself I will leave a large hole in the wall and the anchor bolt will just hang there like Saddam Hussein and the clock will just be holding its breath until the first earthquake. And then it will fall on some luckless pet and I will be sued for every penny I have in my lousy shack hovel life. That is a pretty good summary of my handyman experience.

So I need to get a real handyman. So I go to a furniture store up there that I know fairly well, and I ask for a referral for a great handyman, and this guy standing near us hears my request and he says, “I am a great handyman.” So I looked at him and I said, “How do I know you are a great handyman?” And he said, “Because I drive a ratty pickup and I wear a tool belt.”

That was good enough for me. So we arrange for him to come over in the morning and do the work. He gets over to my place at 8 a.m. sharp and I have high hopes. (These hopes will be lowered very soon.) As he’s coming up the walkway, he seems to be wobbling just a bit. Nothing alarming, but there is definitely a wobble waiting to come out.

I asked him how he was doing and I didn’t want him to answer, but he did. He said he went to his brother’s bachelor party last night, but he had to leave early so he could help me out. Yup. Straight from the naked women and Chivas to old Jim E. Baby’s hovel handyman job. The hopes were pretty much at my ankles about then.

But, because I am a what? I am a dumb shit, that’s what. I let him continue. He comes into the house to analyze the job and he reaches for his tool belt, but his tool belt is not there. He says, “Oh shit, I left it with that stripper last night.” I said, “Hmm.” He said he would go out to his truck and get something. He did. A hammer.

He came back in and he had some kind of punch thing and he took a relatively straight swing with his hammer and he, well, he punched out a big enough hole in my cowering wall to put his fist through — and then crack his knuckles. He looks at me and I look at him and he says, “You got any Spackle?” I swear on my handyman’s manual, he said, “You got any Spackle?”

I said, “No. But I have a Colt 45 in the bedroom.” The humor went right over his hangover. He told me to sit tight; he would run down to the hardware store and get some stuff. He was back in 20 minutes with some hardware bolts and bullshit. And he worked awhile and the only thing I could see change was the size of the hole in the wall. He inquired as to whether I might have a bigger clock to hang.

Well, he went back and forth to the hardware store five times. Five frigging times. He kept coming back with wrong sizes and medieval attachment devices you may have seen in prisons in the Middle Ages. He was there for three-and-a-half hours. To hang one really tacky heavy clock. Three-and-a-half hours.

But finally he says, “Got ’er done. Come on over here and take a look.” I look and sure enough, the damn clock is on the wall. I kind of gingerly touch it and it seems secure. He asks me if I would like to see his work behind the clock and I tell him no, because I have a bad heart and I’ve seen large rat-entrance holes before. He laughed his handyman laugh.

I said, “Well, how much do I owe you?” and he said, and this is the God’s honest handyman fee truth, “how about five bucks?” Being from LA where I have been charged $120 dollars for a guy to come out to the house to look at a problem, I was pretty much stunned. Only five bucks.

I couldn’t believe it. Three-and-a-half hours of work for five bucks. I didn’t know what to say.

Finally, I said, “Would you take four?”

Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.