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As I sat in the car wondering what kind of hidden wonder I would witness at the job today, I stared out the window at all of the passing cars, probably on their way to do whatever job they currently held. Certainly it couldn’t have been much worse than what I looked upon as I entered the musty-smelling basement beneath a house that overlooked the Huron River. Certainly it couldn’t have been a toilet that looked like it had never seen use, let alone a brush, in years. Certainly, for all the jobs that those people were heading to this morning, for all the crap they think they have to put up each and every day, it could never compare to this disgusting artifact that I beheld when I stepped over the barrier of cleanliness and into a land filled with clogged drains, flooded floors and nasty smells.

The first order of business was to find the source of our pain. There were a great number of drain covers, and any one of them could have been the culprit. But, before we could open a drain cover, the technician needed to drain all of the excess water that had built up from the blockage. The water eked slowly and painfully out of this particular drain, but as soon as the top came off the water was eager to get back to where it came from. However, through all the work it took to get the cap off, this was not the main perpetrator of the crimes committed against the poor concrete of the basement. No, the real criminal was hiding, nay, lurking behind a soaking wet and utterly sad-looking washer-dryer combination set. It was up to us to put a stop to this injustice. That’s when we broke out the big guns.

There it is…the big guns. Or gun. Okay, it’s not really a weapon, but calling it that is much cooler than calling it, say, a drain cleaner’s best friend. Using this handy tool, the technician will hopefully be able to clean out all of that muck that is clogging the drain. It’s quite good at its job—in a matter of minutes the long cord was being pulled out of a once-clogged drain that could now perform its drain duties again. I was rather impressed with the way it works. It seems relatively simple, yet to the untrained intern it is incredibly complicated. To operate it, one must remove the front case and extend the cable into the pipe without catching your fingers on a dangerous-looking claw. After dragging the cable back out of the pipe, said claw must be de-mucked through a simple pulling motion, thereby exposing ones hands to the sharp and ever-so-painful pointy teeth of said claw. It is a daunting task, to be performed only by the sanctioned and holy Drain Cleaning Technician. Bow in awe…

I was too busy bowing to help him lift that heavy machinery back up the stairs to the truck, but not too busy to take a picture for future laugh sessions. Watching him struggle was heart-wrenching and I couldn’t bear it, but nevertheless he made it up the stairs with no trouble, completely unscathed. I applauded his efforts and took more pictures of him as he dragged the metal beast back to its lair: the Michigan Power Rodding truck. Unfortunately when we arrived at the back of the truck, I was again subjected the horror of watching him haul the cleaning monster up into the cold bed of the truck. There was nothing I could do however, seeing as my hands were full with holding my camera and trying to take a steady photo.

There’s always light at the end of the tunnel. Or, in this case, the end of a long day of breaking into pipes, cleaning out poop and fixing a poor old woman’s basement. The way the sun brightens up a brisk Michigan day is really beautiful, especially after what I witnessed in the dank underbelly of an old brisk Michigan house. Looking between the trees at such blue wonder definitely made up for all the…crap we put up with in that smelly basement. In my opinion, there is no better greeting than the sun beating down on us after we (that is, the technician) took its example and brightened someone else’s day by fixing their busted or clogged pipes. This picture is truly symbolic of what the company does for the people that call.