David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Nov. 4, 2003

Dave the Toolman I'm not

It's been said that necessity is the mother of invention. True enough, but we have a different saying at our house: Malfunction is the mother of renovation.

It's been a banner year for a malfunctioning Spates house. It all started in January when the ants moved in. They just appeared one day -- en masse. Our home was commandeered by a hoarding mass of insect life, and we were powerless to locate their headquarters. We'd see small reconnaissance teams of ants here and there on a daily basis, and we'd quickly whip out the Raid. The party was over, until the next day when the reconnaissance team got a little bigger. And a little bigger the next day. And a little bigger the day after that.

By the time the recon squads had grown into full-scale ant battalions marching unchallenged like Hitler through Poland, we decided to call in the heavy artillery. Since Mr. Oppenheimer was unavailable, we settled on a professional exterminator. The exterminator fought a valiant battle, but while we were confident we eventually would win the war, the casualties mounted. A few ants were dying, but it was clear that they were well fortified. Weeks passed, and our patience wore thin. The small-strike guerilla extermination campaign wasn't the answer.

The battle shifted one early morning, say around 2 a.m. or so, when the wife woke up to feed the baby. At that time, baby Phil was sleeping in our room next to our bed in a bassinet. It was then we discovered no less than 50 ants scurrying upon the floor beneath the baby's bassinet, and a few were even beginning their ascent.

You could say that was when the ants woke a sleeping giant, literally and figuratively. V-A Day was close at hand.

After a strongly worded phone call to the exterminating company shortly after sunrise, three fully armed exterminators appeared at our door prepared to hunt down and destroy the ant enclave or die trying. They found it, tucked far away between the upstairs' floor and the downstairs' ceiling. Once the enemy's headquarters had been confirmed, it was a simple matter of loading the Enola Gay's bomb bay and clearing her for takeoff. We had won. Tickertape parades were held, old men sobbed, seamen kissed nurses, democracy was ensured, and all was right in the world.

At least until we surveyed the damage. This summer we discovered that during their stay at Chateau Spates, the ants had chewed their way through the wood that secures our deck to the house. It felt like an act of angry defiance, like Saddam setting fire to his oil wells or the Clinton administration personnel trashing their offices as they left town. "For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."

The bill to kill the ants was bad enough, but the tab to repair damage they had caused was their final parting shot.

Incidentally, the days we spent getting the deck replaced coincided with our air conditioner placing a call to Dr. Kevorkian -- during a spell of 95-degree heat. I've already written about those heady days, so I won't rehash the details. Suffice it to say that until you've perspired so much that your drops of sweat actually wake up your baby as you're feeding him, you cannot truly appreciate the wonder and magic a functioning air conditioner provides.

Our latest battle with the malfunctioning house occurred two weeks ago when our months-long leaky kitchen faucet stopped drip, drip, dripping and began pour, pour, pouring. Replacing a kitchen faucet certainly isn't on the same scale as marauding ants, an eaten-away deck or a Southern-fried air conditioner, but it presents its own variety of special challenges.
Mr. Handy I'm not. Let's just say that before I use a screwdriver, I must mutter to myself, "Lefty loosey, righty tighty." Does that provide you a clear enough picture of my tool-wielding skills? I referred to my trusty Time-Life home repair book, and the author tells me that such a repair should take a "pro" about 20 minutes, a "person of moderate skill" about 45 minutes, and a "beginner" 1 hour 15 minutes.

Three hours later, my frustration was boiling over. I like to consider myself a fairly intelligent guy, but when it comes to manly-man tools like screwdrivers, wrenches and pliers, I'm a total idiot.

Nearly four hours after I started, we had a new kitchen faucet installed. Sure it nearly cost me an aneurism and the stress probably took eight months off my life, but the drip, drip, drip is gone, gone, gone.

I can only imagine what the last two months of 2003 have in store for us. Maybe I should knock wood, unless the ants have eaten through it. I hope there's a house left for 2004.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.