My new lap-top computer made the trip to Nantucket on Jan 5, 2011
much less onerous. I played with the machine for two hours on each
leg of the round trip. Before leaving Belmont, I had managed to
download from the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
voluminous texts of Max Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft and
Ferdinand Toennies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Of course I had
time only to read snatches. I thought it would be constructive to
try to understand the social and legal issues that have been
perplexing me through the minds of authors who literally devoted
their lives to thinking and writing about the questions I was asking.

What I learned was, however, different from my expectations. I
discovered logical and rhetorical constructs which relied on
historical accounts of human behavior remote from my own experience
and remote, I believe, also from the experiences of the authors,
who drew largely on chronicles of past events as distinct from their
own observations. I concluded that both authors, Weber and Toennies,
and the uncounted academic writers who emulated them, were in effect
constructing a virtual reality grounded not in experience but in
language, and that "understanding" such texts was not so much
correlating the words with with ones own life, as familiarizing
oneself with a self-contained conceptual structure, rehearsing the
proffered definitions and dynamics until one can no longer
distinguish them from the reality which is the substance of ones
own life and which must be ones primary concern.

Once we arrived on the Island, I became very much immersed in that
reality. The initial appointment with a plumber, one Mr.  Chris M.
Gordon had been scheduled for 12 noon, but by 12:30, by 1:00 o'clock
by 1:30 no plumber had appeared. While waiting I had distracted
myself by making many digital photos, 94 to be exact, of all the
fittings in my plumbing installation, from all possible angles.
I thought then that I had no choice but to abandon my attempts to
corral a local plumber. Instead I would prepare an album of photos,
which, criss-crossing southeastern Massachusetts, I might show to
candidate plumbers in various towns and hamlets on the mainland,
avoiding the need to pay a day's wages and a fast-ferry ride to
Nantucket to someone who would turn out to be not at all interested.
That the second plumber, scheduled for 1:30, a Mr. Dave Kinney, who
had missed an appointment on the previous trip, again failed to
appear, confirmed my conclusion that I must look for help off-island.

Then, unexpectedly, at 2:30, the turning point, the peripateia:
a white unmarked van pulled up to the house, and from it emerged
a tall, broad-shouldered man perhaps in his late fifties. He wore
knee protectors as if he'd just come from a job at which he needed
to kneel. He did not introduce himself, - I assumed him to be David
Kinney.  He started carefully and methodically to inspect the plumbing,
taciturn, without comment or explanation, on the first floor, on the
second floor, in the basement. He opened the bulkhead, went to his
truck to retrieve an air compressor, with which he injected air into
the supply pipes, the pressure tank and the hot water tank. "It seems
to be tight he said."  "The code is a vague thing, but I think this
should pass.  I'd like to help you. I'll get the inspector out here
to have a look and hear what he says."  "Let me give you a key,"
I said. "To whom shall I make out the check."  "G.M. Gordon Plumbing
and Heating," was his reply. At last I knew with whom I was dealing.
I didn't ask "how much?" I gave him a substantial check which he
pocketed without acknowledgement or thank you.  "If it turns out to
have been too much, you can give me back the difference; if it's not
enough, tell me how much more you need." He didn't commit himself,
but seemed satisfied.

Apparently comfortable with my style, Chris Gordon started to talk.
I also like to do everything myself also, he said; and the professionals
are sometimes not as good as the amateurs. We have horses, he said,
they chew on grass and their teeth become rough and need to be ground
down. To do that you got to put your arm in their mouth, - and then
suddenly the mouth seems very large and the teeth awfully sharp.
So the veterinarians do a lot of maneuvering to get the horse to calm
down. They give 'em tranquilizers. But the fellow that does mine,
he's no veterinarian, but he's done it for 25 years, he takes a
leather strap, ties it in a loop, slips it into the horses' mouth
and holds the other end of the loop to the ground with his foot.
Has the teeth ground in no time; never gets into trouble; and the
vets hearing about this have fits. I told Mr Gordon that I know all
about putting my arm in the horse's mouth. I do it all the time.
I haven't been bitten, at least not yet.

As to what will happen next, I have no idea. Extrapolation from my
three encounters with Nantucket plumbers suggests that (at least)
two thirds of them are prepared to charge me thousands of dollars
for plumbing work that doesn't need to be done. What Mr. Gordon
will do besides cashing my check, remains to be seen. One of his
most telling comments was that the litigation with me had caused
political problems on the Island. What these problems are, I don't
know, but I wouldn't be surprised if the building department has
come under pressure for the legal fees they incurred in the
unsuccessful attempt to have my plumbing destroyed, and it is 
possible that the plumbing inspector is almost as eager to
get the plumbing inspected as am I. We'll find out what happens.