How To "Rig" Your Life

Stephen Delopoulos--"She Held My Hand" (mp3)
Billy Bragg--"I Keep Faith" (mp3)

We like to make fun of the previous owner of our house (now 16 years gone from there). He was a classic do-it-yourselfer, and being the jejeune home purchasers that we were back then, we were more enthralled by all of the new things he had done, from playroom in the basement to huge new deck in back, than we were in carefully examining his craftsmanship.

In short, Gene (his real name) rigged everything.

A definition: in our family lexicon, the verb "to rig" means that one has found some partially-thought-out shortcut for making something work. And, implicit in that definition is the idea that if you "rig" things, you also make do with things that no longer work.

What Gene knew is that when you do things yourself, you don't have to bring out a County Inspector to make sure that your work is up to Code. He also knew, which we didn't, that it might be worth it to put a shitload of work into a house in order to be able to sell it. Once long gone, it doesn't matter anymore if the basement is going to flood several times each winter, if the huge deck is going to trap moisture against the back of the house and cause it to rot, if the homemade drainage system for the washing machine flows upward rather than downward.

Almost all of the money we've had to put into our house, or plan to, is because of the results of Gene's rigging.

But the fact is that I, too, am a rigger. Not every modern man is a home improvement specialist, so if you don't know how to fix things, you at least have to figure out how to get by, do without, or rig a temporary solution.

Though I fancy myself a pretty good cook, I may be even more proud of the fact that I cook all of those meals on a stove where only one and a half of the 4 burners work (one works part of the time if you really slam it into the socket). Though I don't know how to create drainage system, I can dig a ditch and create a wall so that most of the laundry water drainage won't run back into the house. I can put a bucket under a leak. I can make a toilet whose innards are falling apart keep flushing with a rusty safety pin. I can paint over anything without conscience.

But to paraphrase someone who might have once said something famous: "He who lives by the rig, dies by the rig."

And so, two weeks ago, I found myself on an interstate past Louisville, Kentucky in a Toyota Camry whose basic systems had been compromised, even though it was still running. Drive up mountains and it will overheat. Drive too fast and it will overheat. Drive in the hot temperatures of that day with the air conditioner on too long and it will overheat. But I had figured out those parameters pretty quickly, and so, through constant negotiations between speed and heat and altitude, I had made it over 300 miles and was feeling pretty good about my chances of making it another 180 miles before stopping for the night. I was driving 65 miles per hour and feeling socially responsible that I was getting 35 mpg, something I'd never done before. Yep, I had it licked. A little hot and sweaty, but the music was blaring and I was feeling good.

That was when I hit the dead stop of all lanes on the interstate. I'd just had my brakes done, so I coasted to a smooth stop and prepared to wait it out, windows down, a/c off. Yeah, I sat for awhile and it was hot, but the car didn't overheat while idling and I had a cup of ice left over from a Panera drink and I was alone, so I was as patient as I can get when traffic stops. Soon enough, traffic started to pull forward, so in preparation, I put up the windows, switched the a/c back on and prepared to resume my course. When the car in front of me started to move, I, too, put my foot on the gas. The car clicked and died.

Now, there are two things that I've yet to tell you about. First, that there is a problem with the battery in the Camry, that postive post on the battery has worn down and the cable cannot be tightened enough to keep the charge flowing solidly, so that if it gets jarred too much, the car loses power. Now, I once had that thing rigged, with a piece of string that pulled that cable to the right and kept tension on it and kept electricity, flowing, but, in between then and now, the car has been in the shop and they have derigged my rigging. Second, that over time, since it's a 1996, both handles on the front doors have broken off and you have to put the window down and open the door from the outside. Which you can't do when the battery connection has slipped. So, I'm sitting in a dead Camry in the middle of the interstate and cars are beginning to honk behind me and not only can I not start the car, I can't even get out.

It is the Perfect Storm of the "rigging" lifestyle.

The only solution is to slither between the seats to the back and to slide out the back door on the passenger side hands first, walk around to the driver's door, open it from the outside, reach inside, release the hood, open the hood, pull the left battery cable as far to the right as possible to try to get a connection, close the hood, get back inside and try to start the car. By that time, cars are passing me on both sides of that left lane of the interstate, shouting derisively and raising their hands like "What the fuck?" and no one offering any help because I am the last impediment to their getting back up to interstate speed. But, yes, the car starts, and, yes, I start driving again.

At some point, in 10 days or so, I will have to drive back home. I will have to negotiate altitude and speed and heat. But, most of all, I will have to confront once again the consequences of being a "rigger." And though I probably will make it home, the process may not be pretty.

Happy birthday to my wife on her birthday, she who "held my hand" and "keeps the faith" as I rig us through the days.