The Wrath of God
I was able to take a soak ever night, which was sure a great and necessary thing. After working in the yard, during a brief dry spell (two days) I re-irritated my heel. I was hobbling around again like an old man. When I submerged in the tub, it was bliss. I could turn the jets on and float my foot near the rushing bubbles. It was a rejuvenating heated massage that sure helped my foot.
On a Monday evening in mid-November I stepped out for my nightly ritual, I noticed that the wind was starting to build—a sure sign that a new rain front was heading in from the and coast and the gulf of Alaska. I had a great soak, getting a warming foot rub, and paid little attention to the small gusts of wind that made the canopy over-head rattle. I lost track of time and my surrounding. Suddenly the pump stopped working on the spa. There were absolutely no bubbles at all. I fiddled with the controls and slowly began to realize what Dennis had meant by “you’ll be calling me.” I had visions of the old mechanics finally giving up the ghost and dying. It was twenty years old I thought to myself. So with some sadness I closed up the tub and dried off.
Now, you need to realize that I was limping around in my aqua socks, a baggy pair of swim trunks and a beach towel—in the dark. I noticed that the wind had picked up and I suddenly had the great for-thought to put the cinder blocks (that I had purchase to use as the foundations for the canopy legs so it cold stand a little taller and be anchored into the cement pad) on the base of each leg just in case the wind got a little rowdy later on in the night. As I was dragging the last block on to the remaining leg base, a gust of wind wiped up the trees and bushes in the yard and also the canopy. Actually the wind didn’t just rattle the structure, it picked it up and flipped it over my head in one outstanding maneuver and smashed and crashed it top first into the garden right behind me. Of course the hot tub cover also went flying over my head and crashed into the canopy and rosebushes as well. The towel around my shoulders was off and I was left crouching behind the tub in just my swim trunks in the dark—in the wind.
“Holy mother of God”! I thought. I looked behind me and quickly surveyed the damage. The nylon canopy with its cute little cupola had been smashed down into the rose canes, the legs with their drawn and tied back curtains were bent and tangled at awful angles. I realized I could not pull it out of the mess—me with the gimpy foot. This is when adrenaline always seems to kick in for me.
I remember back when I was on college summer-break and I got a quick job of moving a large upright grand piano across town. Long story short, I took a corner too fast in downtown traffic and dumped it in the street. Here was this half a ton piano, sitting smashed on its keyboard on the pavement. With two hefty pushes I was able to push it back into the truck and drive off. Needless to say I had to deliver a check to owner for the pieces-parts that I was able to get the piano restorer to give me for the mess. Me a piano player—a musician—destroying a beautiful instrument like that. I still close my eyes in shame after 35 years.
Back to the dark and the storm and the swim trunks—I grabbed hold of the large and awkward tub cover and wrestled with it, heaving it over my head. I struggled with it until I got it back on the tub. Through sheer will, adrenaline, and the very motivating feeling of being really pissed off at the whole situation, I got that thing onto my broken, practically free hot tub. I grabbed my towel and limbed back into the house thoroughly defeated. I wrote the whole canopy off as a total loss. I had no way of even going back on salvaging it that night.
I waited until the next afternoon after school. Marianne and I went hobbling out together and pulled the mangled canopy off the rose canes—ripping shredding the nylon was we went. The cheap metal from China never had a change of retaining its shape. Knowing how poorly it was made, there was no hope of bend it back into shape without the mental fatiguing and falling apart. Now for the tub—I called Dennis knowing that $85 wasn’t gong to cover replacing a pump for an old tub. When it rains, it pours or when it blows, it really blows…
