There’s a big hole in the middle of my house. Not the roof — the floor. It’s where the floor furnace used to be. Todd Ahern and Mitchell Johnson came to switch out my gas water heater and install a new electric one but access down the trap door was not big enough. The electric heater — which holds less water but is short and fat — barely fit through the furnace hole.
Roofing over the vents meant that pilot lights were snuffed. When both furnace and water heater, both gas, had been removed, I began to get my mind back. I’d thought it was aging or diabetes or some clinging virus that made me fuzzy and grey, but now it leaves little by little so it must have been fumes from gas.
The weeks-long sequence of changing out the fixtures of this little old house has been dramatic. I first contacted Jim Schlosser in August for reroofing this old shake roof, which was picturesque but worn and damaged by the hail storm that smashed so much in Valier. He said he couldn’t get to it, but then his partner’s son appeared and quickly did the job. There were a few interruptions including an emergency session on a Sunday morning by Jim as it began to rain and the plastic undercoat was not yet nailed down.
The new hot water heater is in and functioning. The wall furnace, which will still be gas but vent through the wall instead of the roof, is yet to come. Hopefully, Bain Plumbing and Heating will send someone to take measurements and make recommendations, then order the unit and install it when it comes — hopefully soon. They are from the county seat, Conrad, thirty miles away, and serve a broad area.
With the two gas fixtures unhooked, I worried about leaks in the remaining pipe feeds, so contacted Northwestern Energy which is in South Dakota. They sent out Blake, who lives in Choteau, to shut off the gas at the meter. He pronounced my meter hopeless and installed a new one. I told him about the gas line in the yard next door which leaked a year or so ago and was replaced from the alley to the house.
Now I get a robocall saying that a team is coming to walk the lines all through Valier, “sniffing” for leaks. In Bozeman a few years ago an art gallery on the main street blew up, killing the woman inside. The internet scrapes for subjects to emphasize and it has found my mention of gas, so it’s now feeding me gas explosions of all sizes and mortalities. I get it. The stuff is dangerous. The rumor is that the major area pipeline is being renovated, but secrecy prevails to prevent criticism.
Part of my decision to roof had been encouraged by the thought that LIEAP — Low Income Energy Assistance Program — would probably pay for the new heaters. I filled out the papers but borrowed to pay for the water heater. Then I was told I had to use a specific installer that LIEAP had contracted with for many years.
All these workmen who had previously come had been middle-aged or younger, strong, a bit weathered, and terse. They didn’t say much and went right to the job, asking questions only to understand what was wanted. This LIEAP installer was a handyman, a grandpa, and a type I used to know in Browning when they often stopped at the Scriver Studio to gossip. They were unregulated self-taught entrepreneurs without formal training.
He brought no tools but a small heater. I have electric heaters and had said so. I explained what I thought but he argued and pointed out other problems, like my woodstove. Then after a day or so he called up to say he was coming to discuss a second heater, which I didn’t want. This is a small house comfortably heated by one convection floor heater that could function happily with one convection wall heater. “But the MONEY,” he said.
I called the LIEAP managers who are women in Helena. They directed the installer that if I didn’t want a second heater, I didn’t have to have one. But they said that the second heater was for the “two bedrooms.” This is not a suburban house but rather a little Thirties-built crackerbox. The bedrooms are so small that a heater would set the bedding on fire. There is no hallway. Why the interest in bedrooms?
So I withdrew from the program, offending everyone. When you take charity, you must remember that beggars can’t be choosers. Also, people can use it to exert power over you, directing you what to do. This is why my family and myself have used unemployment but nothing else. No food stamps, disability — not even my brother with the concussion who like me bucked female managers.
Now I’m starting on the yard, which wants to be woods, the kind of second growth one sees on land meant for building that hasn’t started yet. I sawed down trees yesterday but couldn’t get the highest one, so I called Northwestern Energy again for a bucket truck to cut back those branches. These maintenance jobs like the meter are inconvenient, difficult, and miserable, but they are what makes infrastructure safe and functional.
The problem is that they are all powered by the property owners, some of whom don’t live there or care about the people who do live there. We are facing a wave of derelict but well-built houses in cities that have ballooned and then collapsed. The owners have disappeared. In this village of aging people, some properties are tied up in legal webs, like probate or tax foreclosure.
The steady stream of tradesmen made me see my house with new eyes. I didn’t come up to code or proper housekeeping local standards. They were impressed by my library but puzzled why anyone would have so many books. My improvisations, workarounds, and old furniture suddenly looked differently to me as I saw with their eyes. Some ignored the cats, some picked them up to pet, and one man was actually afraid when Tuxie hissed at him. She is the “trannie” cat who grew up under the floor with no sunlight so her hormone development was affected. Local tomcats run from her in panic.
It’s all very interesting. Now to find someone to patch this three-foot-wide hole in the floor.
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