Ice Fishing for Brown Trout

Thirty years ago I made the stupid mistake of renting an apartment in an old, historic building in State College, Pennsylvania, owned by a non-profit organization whose very name suggested trust and respect. Boy was I wrong.

That first winter I had no heat for weeks and, when I complained, I was told to sit tight. I did sit tight, by the way, snug as a frozen bug in my sleeping bag as I watched TV and tried not to think about how cold I was. But I was patient and I trusted them. After all, this was Happy Valley, where people cared about other people more than they did anywhere else on planet Earth.

But my patience began to wear a little thin when I used the toilet one day in a bathroom that was still colder than a witch's you-know-what. After I flushed, I was greeted by an effusion of my own excrement. Apparently, it had been so cold for so long that the sewer line had frozen. I decided to investigate.

What I found wasn't an entire frozen sewer line but a break in the historic terracotta sewer pipe under the front porch and there, unimaginably, was my own frozen sewage, staring me in the face like a brown rock monster from outer space. Then I found out that the electric hot water heater was still working, even though there was no hot water in the radiator heating pipes from the cold furnace. A pick and shovel proved to be no match for The Thing From A Frozen World.

But I didn't give up — or give in — to the unwelcome presence of this creature from beyond commonsense. Like a resourceful pack rat, I shuffled 30-gallon garbage bags full of hot water from the electric hot water heater to the poop monster under the porch. It took three bags of hot water and about fifteen minutes before the turd monster melted like The Wicked Witch of the West and disappeared down the earthen slope toward the front yard. Apparently, this was the only frozen spot in the sewer line.

That tears it, I said to myself that afternoon. I went upstairs and called the local code enforcement people. The next day a man arrived who immediately became fixated on a small crack in the kitchen linoleum. He pointed to the crack like it was alive and about to consume us both. He got out his clipboard and wrote feverishly. I managed to tear him away from the hideous breach in the kitchen floor long enough to show him where I had to pick and shovel and then melt my own poop in order to poop again. I showed him and then made him touch the cold radiators. I showed him my pajama sleeping bag. Undeterred, he wrote up the non-profit owners for their unconscionable, crack-in-the-linoleum violation and left.

Later that day, a creature sporting a page-boy hairdo showed up at my back door, full of piss and vinegar. I knew she was from the goody-goody non-profit organization because hell hath no fury like a snob whose soft underbelly of elitism is exposed to a common hamburger eater like me.

"This isn't Parkway Plaza," she seethed. What she meant by that remark was that I should have felt privileged to pay her uppity organization $200 a month plus pay all my own utilities instead of complaining about the freezing cold or my frozen poop under the porch because I had been spared from paying twice that amount to live in Happy Valley's most exclusive high-rise apartment building (at that time). Being a woman, she got away with that remark whereas a man might have found himself on my kitchen floor, face-to-face with that hideous four-inch crack for which he'd been so inappropriately fined.

Not only was I totally speechless, right then and there I prepared to make quick tracks out of Happy Valley forever. It was a shock but I'd get over it. For all its posturing as the coolest and most loving and the most cultured place in Centre County, Pennsylvania, I quickly discovered that Happy Valley was nothing but a ruse, a cover up for people whose true love in life, besides the almighty dollar, is exclusivity and the limelight that goes along with it.

That was 30 years ago. I put Happy Valley, PA in my rear view mirror and never looked back. Not even once. In fact, I wouldn't go back to Happy Valley to take a crap.