
This is a true story. I have an amazing handyman. He’s the best handyman in my city. I’d even venture to say he’s the best handyman in the Washington, DC, area. In fact, heck—I’d choose him over anyone on earth, for building and fixing sh*t on my property, ’cause I trust him.
He built me a chicken coop. He built the cool wall and railing in my entryway. He built the cool wall and railing in my next-door neighbor’s entryway. He installed my new curtains and fixed my broken faucet. He installed a fan in not one but two of my bathrooms. True, the chicken coop ended up being a mirror image of the plans I gave him. But this is my fault, for making him work with plans.
‘Cause he’s a creative architectural genius. He don’t need no plans. He don’t want no plans. He just drives up, wishes me a good morning, and smokes a cigarette while planning the project in his head. Then he vanishes into Home Depot for a good stretch, drives back, and works like a total machine for hours upon hours. Sometimes he listens to the kind of edgy, hip, raw pop music that I also like. Other times, he works in silence. That is, if you consider hammering and power tool using silent.
But he’s always up for talking—that is, when he’s not in the middle of something. Which usually only happens in the early morning, or when he breaks to smoke or ask me a question. At those times, he’s an amazing conversationalist. He likes to talk about country living, chickens, foxes, his ideas for someone else’s basement, strange scenarios involving the county judicial system, and bizarre natural disasters that seem to regularly hit his patch of rural land.
I always look forward to having something in my house break, because his stories never disappoint. One of my favorite stories of his isn’t even a story—it’s just a fact. He doesn’t use the Internet. He’ll probably never see this post, because he doesn’t truck with blogs. He doesn’t even have an email address. Not even one. (I mean, geez—I have eight! Though, on second thought, that probably makes me the weird one.) He recently took a huge leap into modernity—one day I was astonished to receive a text message from him. He got a new phone! Though he has never been hard to get ahold of, even before this breakthrough.
“But, wait!!” you gasp in horror. “If he’s not on the Internet, how does he get business?? You mean, he doesn’t have a website?!! He’s not on social media??! Don’t you pretty much have to be online to make money nowadays?!!”
Well, my friends, Aunt Liza is here to tell you that that just ain’t true. That’s all them corporate Silicon Valley snobs up there in Californey tryin’ to steal you’s money. ‘Cause, my amazing handyman? He’s booked solid. In fact, the last time I called him with a big job, he told me he couldn’t do it this month. I says, how about in three months? He says, nope. I says, next year? He says, maybe, I dunno. Maybe not. I got this good project goin’.
So Aunt Liza is just here now out of luck.
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Do you know of an amazing local handyman?
(Usually, the questions I write to end blog posts are rhetorical. But this one’s also dead serious. . . .)
Please, who is this treasure? We have an old house from the 60’s and are now 75 and 67 empty nesters. Do tell!
I’ll email you, Irene. š