Excerpted from The Wailing Wall
copyright 2011
I hate old houses. I hate them with unsurpassed hatred. I hate them the way people in Texas hate the Redskins. It’s an irrational loathing, I know, but bear with me. I grew up in an old house. Actually, not too far from this one, the way the crow flies, but I’m not a crow and I can’t fly, so that’s not relevant to the story. What is relevant is what I learned while I lived in that house.
copyright 2011
I hate old houses. I hate them with unsurpassed hatred. I hate them the way people in Texas hate the Redskins. It’s an irrational loathing, I know, but bear with me. I grew up in an old house. Actually, not too far from this one, the way the crow flies, but I’m not a crow and I can’t fly, so that’s not relevant to the story. What is relevant is what I learned while I lived in that house.
I learned I hate old houses.
I grew up there. I became a man. I had fantastic parents and a great family with lots of brothers and sisters because we’re Italian and we’re Catholic and we lived in the great big middle of a community that was old-family Hispanic blah blah blah. The dreaded triple curse. With that combination, I’m lucky I’m not a priest, God forbid. I would not make a good priest. Just ask my ex-wife. She’ll tell you that and anything else you want to know about me.
Thing is, old houses have stuff wrong with them, like old people. Their pipes don’t always work, if you know what I mean. And pipes, in old houses, are not easy to fix. Because they were built a long time ago. And see, a long time ago, when people built houses, they laid the foundation and did all the—I don’t know what they do—the stuff, you know, the stuff they do when they build a house—anyway, this guy building the house a hundred years ago, when he had to relieve himself, to use the politically correct term, he laid down his tools and he trotted behind the barn to the outhouse where he conducted business.
Why? Because there was no indoor plumbing a hundred years ago! Therefore, stay with me here, the builders did not leave a lot of crawl space for things like pipes and drains and such. Which was no problem for them, because the only time they were under that floor was before they laid it.
It is a problem for me, however, for two reasons.
One: I am a big man. I do not fit well in small spaces. I am a little—ahem—claustrophobic. Just a little, mind you. But it’s enough.
Two: (which should actually be one if I was listing them in order of priority) Spiders. Spiders, unlike people, thrive in small, dark, moist, places where they spin their webs and eat flies and lurk in wait for people like me who come unglued at the sight of anything with eight legs and four hundred eyes. And if you’ve never seen a six foot four inch claustrophobic Italian Catholic cop come unglued, count yourself among the blessed. So I guess you can add arachnophobia to my list of phobias, if you’re making a list.
And while you’re at it, if you’re making a list, go ahead and add whatever phobia you call it that sets the hairs on the back of my neck on high alert whenever I’m around an attractive, intelligent, articulate, sensitive, unattached female. If you ask me, they’re as bad as spiders, just without so many legs.
