Read The Tank Man's Son for Free Online Page A

a conduit for our freakishly hard water. Mom still had to walk to the Dietzes’ for drinking and cooking water every few days, taking Jerry with her to help lug it back. Dad had found an orange five-gallon plastic cooler, and it lived on the kitchen counter next to the sink. For the washing machine, however, Mom was forced to use the well water, and everything she washed turned yellow. T-shirts and underwear were the color of lemons after one wash, the color of urine after two, and a ruined, rusty orange not long after that. Evidence of the hard water collected all over the house: an orange stripe ringed the toilet, the water that came out of theshowerhead turned two of the bathroom walls orange, and beneath each faucet that dripped   —which was every faucet   —there was a dark spot the size and color of a penny.
    Dad looked at his honey-do list, looked at the condition of the house, and decided the next logical step would be to obtain a luxurious bathtub. One day he marched into the bathroom with a saw and cut a rectangular hole in the floor. He sawed right through the floor joists as well, and soon we could see clear down to the sand beneath the house, several feet below.
    “I got a deal” was all he’d tell us.
    When Mom got wind, she crossed her arms and declared, “This is going to look absolutely ridiculous   —a sunken tub, in this house?”
    Dad grinned like she’d walked into a trap. “You know, lots of the finest homes have sunken tubs.”
    The following day a man drove up in a truck and helped Dad unload the tub and muscle it into the bathroom. Dad took over from there, sliding it into place with pry bars and lowering it into the hole he’d cut. The top of the tub stuck up about six inches above the floor, creating a serious tripping hazard. The length, however, was an even bigger problem. The hole Dad had cut was about a foot too long.
    “Not my fault,” Dad grumbled. “They gave me the wrong dimensions! Jumbo tub, my ass.”
    There really wasn’t a good way to cover the hole back up, given that Dad had removed all the joists, so he simply gave up on the entire project, leaving us with a semisunken tub and a one-foot gap.

    The hole in the bathroom floor wasn’t a problem for us kids. We loved it. One of our never-ending chores was to sweep up the sand that seemed to multiply in the house, and the hole made a perfect place to dump it without going outside.
    The sand bothered Mom the most, and she got it in her head thata cement front porch would make a good place to kick off our sandy shoes, thus keeping the floors clean. Dad refused to pour one.
    “Why don’t you do it yourself if you’re so fired up about it?” he griped.
    The next day Mom called a cement truck. She scrounged some old pieces of wood from the yard and nailed them into rough forms around the front door. When the driver arrived, he took one look at the forms and refused to pour. He knew Mom’s handiwork would simply buckle and allow the wet cement to ooze across the sand. After he and Mom just stood there for a minute, the driver asked Mom for Dad’s toolbox and rebuilt the forms himself so that he could pour the cement. Since Mom didn’t have any cash, she raided Dad’s stash of ammunition and gave the man a few boxes of shotgun shells.
    Two days later, when it dried, we had a real porch sure enough   —although if it made any difference in the amount of sand inside, I couldn’t tell.
    The constant sand invasion was the reason for our excitement when a traveling salesman stopped by to demonstrate a Kirby vacuum. We actually dared to dream that our sweeping days would be over, since the vacuum, we were all assured, could run on both carpet and hard floors. We gathered in the living room, Dad in his armchair and Mom on the couch with the three of us. The salesman stood in the center of the room, talking about its wind-tunnel design and lifting capacity and precise manufacturing tolerances, after which he made eye