The project to find a new stove has come to an impasse. Home Depot will deliver it, but they will not hook up a gas stove. They insist that I will need a licensed plumber for that.
I've been down the road of plumbers and stoves before. Mrs. Billingsley recommended a plumber for me. He was the first plumber listed in the phone book, under "A Plumber." Wow, what an experience. I really could only ascribe his behavior to malicious mischief. After he was gone, I started to smell gas. I complained about it repeatedly, but everyone would say, "I don't smell any gas."
One day not long after that, I turned on the stove, and flames came roaring out of the back of the stove. I quickly turned off the stove, but the fire got bigger, licking up the wall to the cabinets. I remembered that I had oil lamps stored up there, all fueled up to be ready for a power outage. As the fire took over the kitchen I began to become terribly frightened. It's impossible to describe being in a fire. I decided I didn't have time to get the lamps out. I had to flee. I probably had 15 minutes before the house burned down.
What to do? At first I stood in the yard screaming. Two minutes. I recovered my senses and ran to the house next door to call the fire department. Three minutes. I called the fire department and told them there was a fire. The clown that they had answering the phone was a receptionist who said, slowly, as if I didn't speak English, "Repeat everything very slowly." I repeated everything very slowly. "Your address?" I told her my address. "You're not in our district. You'll have to call the fire department in your district." "What is their number?" She knew not. Five more minutes had passed. My neighbors ran to my gas tank outside and turned off the gas going into the house. They managed to reach the correct fire department for me.
It was probably only five minutes before the fire department arrived, and they saved the day just in the nick of time. The house was covered with soot and smelled of smoke, but there was not much damage. It was a horrifying experience.
They told me that the flexible pipe behind the stove had broken when the "plumber" had moved it out. What he was doing back there I don't know. But I knew he had moved it because it was pulled out while I was there. The fire chief told me that every time the stove is moved when using a flexible hose, it should be replaced. OK. Good to know.
I checked the phone book for plumbers, and went with my usual mantra for contractors, "licensed, bonded, insured." Master plumbers license # xxxx. This almost always turns out well.
I called such a plumber and told him I needed my gas stove hooked up. Did I have the connections already? Yes. (Of course. I'm having my old gas stove replaced with a new one.) OK. Let me know when you expect it. I quizzed him about replacing the hose. "Not necessary," he said. I knew this wasn't kosher. Why was I bothering to have a professional do this to do an unprofessional job?
Well, I guess I'll chat with a few more people.
The last time I saw the lovely fellow that caused the fire he was on the local news on a special segment they had every Sunday on a news program. The broadcasting station is located two counties from here. He had figured that was a safe distance to pull a new scam, and was calling himself "Dr. Preston, psychiatrist." He had a regular segment on the news and said that his specialty was hypnotherapy! Look out. The angels conspired to have an executive from that news station speak at a meeting I went to, and afterwards I told her that Dr. Preston had lived in this county a couple of years before, claiming to be a plumber. If he was a psychiatrist, he had gotten a degree overnight somehow. That was the end of the psychiatric and television career of Dr. Preston.
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