"Not-So-Hot Stuff"

By Jerry Zezima

Because I’m a guy who likes to be clean and fresh — my wife would raise a stink if I weren’t — I get burned up by showers that leave me cold.

That’s what happened one morning when I took a shower in water so absolutely freezing that it could have sent a polar bear into cardiac arrest.

So we called the heating company to send somebody over to fix the furnace, which at that point worked about as well as a cheap cigarette lighter.

“You have sludge,” said a personable technician named Connor.

“I’m old,” I explained. “What about the furnace?”

“It has sludge, too,” he replied.

“What’s the answer?” I asked.

“A new oil tank,” Connor answered.

Our present tank, which sits above ground on the side of the house, is 19 years old. It replaced the previous tank, which was underground and started leaking oil a week before our older daughter’s bridal shower, which was held in the backyard.

“The tank was dug up, which made the side yard look like a war zone, and was temporarily replaced by an old, rusted, above-ground tank that we festooned with balloons and a sign saying, ‘Congratulations!’ This was in full view of the guests,” I told Connor.

“Your daughter must have been thrilled,” he said.

“She was very tankful,” I joked.

Connor smiled and said, “The average lifespan of the tank you have now is about 20 years. You don’t have to replace it right away, but the cold water problem will happen again if you don’t.”

In the meantime, the furnace needed to be cleaned. While he was doing the dirty work, Connor told me about the time he was held up at gunpoint at a gas station while getting fuel for a customer in the middle of the night.

“It was 2 a.m. and I was filling jerry cans with diesel for a customer who ran out of oil,” he recalled.

“I call my bathroom the Jerry can,” I said.

“Anyway,” Connor continued, “this guy came up to me with a gun, but I could see it wasn’t loaded.”

“Was he?” I inquired.

“Definitely,” Connor said. “Then along came his friend. They were working together, so the guy with the gun shooed him away, like he was saving me. He said it was his birthday and he wanted to go inside to buy some Four Loko, which is a drink with booze in it, but he didn’t have any money and wanted me to give him some so he could celebrate. He pointed the gun at me, but I knew it was empty, so I said forget it and the guy walked away. The night shift was very interesting.”

So is the day shift because Connor, who’s 27 and has been on the job for four years, gets to meet customers like the guy who called to complain about a foul odor.

“I knew he had a pretty bad leak because I could smell it from the front yard,” Connor said. “Pressurized oil was going into the soil.”
“Hey, that rhymes!” I noted.

“I used a vacuum and a barrel straw to suck out 300 gallons,” he said. “It took two and a half hours. The guy reeked, too.”

“He probably needed a shower,” I said. “Did he have hot water?”

“Yes,” Connor said. “And now so do you.”

He replaced two filters and one strainer in the furnace, which fired up and was running smoothly once again.

“At least you didn’t blame me for having to take a cold shower,” Connor said. “A lot of customers do.”

“My wife will be happy you fixed the problem,” I said.

“Tell her you helped,” Connor said, “and she won’t blame you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “This is the only time being in hot water won’t get me in hot water.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"The Light's On, but Nobody's Home"

By Jerry Zezima

I am a lightheaded homeowner who knows that a house is not a home unless there is something to do. And there always is.

That’s why I want to buy — with the approval of the bank, the federal government and, most important, my wife — a lighthouse.

I admit that I am not the likeliest owner of one of these sea sentinels for two reasons: (a) they require a lot of work and I am the least handy man in America and (b) they require a lot of money and my mortgage would end up, fittingly, underwater.

But that did not stop me from entering an auction for the Penfield Reef Lighthouse, an 1874 Second Empire-style historic structure situated off of Fairfield, Connecticut, in Long Island Sound.

The property, which features a 51-foot octagonal light tower atop a two-story keeper’s quarters, is accessible only by boat.

It’s another reason why I wouldn’t be a good lighthouse owner: I have a boat, but it’s small, plastic and is kept in my bathtub.

Still, I could not resist the lure of a nautical adventure that would make Johnny Depp jealous.

But first I had to run the idea past my wife, Sue, who is the captain of the family.

“I want to buy a lighthouse,” I told her.

“Why?” she asked.

“So I can be the star of the next ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie,” I replied.

“Right now you could be the star of the next ‘Money Pit’ movie,” Sue said.

“There’s an auction for a lighthouse and I want to put in a bid,” I explained. “What’s our limit?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” she replied. “Go have fun. But just don’t win it.”

I went online and saw that the bidding started at $100,000.

“I’m going to come up short,” I told Paul Hughes, a public affairs officer for the General Services Administration, which was conducting the auction.

“Looks like,” replied Hughes. “But if you’re the least handy man in America, you definitely don’t want to win. The GSA has lighthouses throughout the country, including the Great Lakes, and they all need a significant amount of work. They’re not pristine, move-in ready. Not even TLC will help.”

“Does TLC stand for total lighthouse care?” I asked.

“You could say that,” said Hughes, adding that he’s a homeowner who is “OK, not great, at being handy. I couldn’t own a lighthouse, either.”

“Do you get calls from real estate people who want to buy your house?” I asked.

“All the time,” Hughes answered.

“My wife and I do, too,” I said. “The first time someone asked if we wanted to sell our house, I told him that he would have to drag my cold, dead body out of here. Then I said that if we did sell, we’d have nowhere to go, so I asked if we could live with him.”

“What did he say?” Hughes wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I replied. “He hung up.”

“If you bought a lighthouse,” Hughes pointed out, “you’d have someplace to go.”

“And my wife would tell me where to go,” I predicted.

“I guess she wouldn’t approve,” he said.

“She says I don’t do enough around our own house,” I replied.

Hughes said it’s “a labor of love” to preserve history and that the GSA tries to give historic lighthouses to conservation groups, towns or museums. But if there is no interest, the lighthouses are put up for auction.

Not surprisingly, my measly bid of 25 grand didn’t come close to buying the Penfield Light, which went to the undisclosed winner for $370,000.

“It’s all for the best,” I told Sue, who was very relieved. “How could I take care of a lighthouse when I can’t even change a lightbulb?”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"Going Undercover"

By Jerry Zezima

I have 32 pairs of drawers in my drawers. That’s one pair of underwear for every day of the longest months of the year with one pair left over, plus two left over for every day of every month that has 30 days, except February, which has 28, though in leap years it has 29.

I also have 40 pairs of socks (you do the math, I’m exhausted), plus 30 T-shirts, 10 pairs of pajamas, 10 pairs of shorts, 18 sweatshirts, four sweatpants, two dozen long-sleeved and short-sleeved button-down shirts, half a dozen pairs of jeans, a couple of pairs of khakis, four sport jackets and three suits that must date back to the Clinton administration and probably don’t fit anymore.

I mention this because it is time to switch my seasonal wardrobe from spring and summer to fall and winter. But instead of doing that, I have decided to get rid of so many clothes that I should just pile them up and light a match — without, let’s hope, burning the house down.

I’ll start with my underwear, which I always make sure matches whatever I am wearing because: (a) I remember my mother’s admonition to wear clean skivvies in case I am in an accident and (b) I have a fashion plate in my head.

My wife, Sue, can’t believe I do this.

“Who do you think is going to see it?” she asked one day while stuffing a bunch of clean underwear into one of my dresser drawers.

“The whole country,” I replied. “I’m looking to get on the cover of GQ — Geezers’ Quarterly.”

At least my urologist was impressed when I saw him for a checkup.

I was wearing red, white and blue boxers with hearts on them. They matched my red and blue shirt and white shorts.

“I try to be stylish,” I said. “What do you think?”

“Very nice,” he replied. “Now cough.”

On another day, my dermatologist also noticed my fashion choice: green and brown boxers with footballs on them, which matched my green shirt and brown shorts.

“Did you do this on purpose?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a patient who does that,” said the doctor, who was wearing argyle socks.

“I used to wear argyles,” I told him. “One day, a woman at work said to me, ‘I like your socks.’ I looked her in the eye and said, ‘I’m not wearing socks. It’s a skin condition.’ She blanched and backed away.”

“I’ll have to remember that one,” the dermatologist said.

“I wear white socks now,” I said. “They go with my old-guy outfits: T-shirts and shorts when it’s hot and sweatshirts and sweatpants when it’s cold.”

“And your underwear matches whatever you’re wearing?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “If I had my life to live over, I would have started wearing boxer shorts a lot sooner. I could have saved myself thousands of wedgies. Oh, well, you can’t turn back the clock, I guess.”

“Did you used to wear briefs?” the doctor inquired.

“Yes,” I said. “Tighty-whities. For a long time, I sounded like the lead singer in the Vienna Boys’ Choir.”

Now it’s time to take inventory, not only of my underwear, but of my socks, T-shirts and every other article of clothing I own, some of which I have never worn.

“Why don’t you donate some to Goodwill?” Sue asked.

“So I can go Goodwill hunting?” I responded.

She looked like she wanted to stuff me in a bin and take a tax write-off.

“Maybe I should just leave everything out,” I suggested. “You never know what the weather will be anyway.”

“You have too many clothes,” Sue said.

“You buy them for me,” I countered.

“You need to get rid of some,” she said.

“OK,” I conceded. “I’ll start with my underwear. It won’t be a brief encounter, but it could end up being a boxer rebellion.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"The Best Seat in the Car"

By Jerry Zezima

I have been driving people crazy my whole life. But since I got my driver’s license at the tender age of 16, I have been driving them in my car.

That changed recently when I had the rare opportunity to be driven myself. And although I was sitting in the front passenger seat, it made me — much to the annoyance of my wife, Sue, who was behind the wheel of her car — a backseat driver.

It was delicious payback for all the criticism I’ve received from countless passengers over the years.

Sue, for example, has always said I drive too fast. Our younger daughter, an aspiring Formula 1 champion, thinks I drive too slow.

Yet, in 55 years of obeying (usually) the rules of the road, I have been in only two accidents, neither of which was my fault.

One time my car’s brakes failed at an intersection and I bowled into two other vehicles, leaving the 7-10 split.

Nobody was hurt, but one of the drivers wanted to know what happened.

“Those are the brakes,” I explained.

The other time, a guy driving in the opposite direction at a traffic light, which was green, suddenly cut in front of me and went the wrong way down a one-way street.

Again, nobody was hurt.

When I walked over to his car and asked why he made such a boneheaded move, he said, “My GPS told me to turn left.”

I said, “If you had been looking at the road instead of your GPS, you would have seen two things: (a) an arrow indicating you were going the wrong way and (b) me.”

Yes, there have been speeding tickets, but that’s only because I was going with the flow of traffic. My daughter, though not Sue, would understand.

So this time it was a welcome change to put the shoe on the other lead foot. And it just happened to belong to Sue, who actually has a feather foot because she’s a Sunday driver. And it was Saturday.

My first warning came right after we had buckled up.

“Be careful backing out of the driveway,” I said. And with good reason because our street is plagued by vehicular maniacs who routinely blow through the stop sign in front of our house.

“Who’s driving, you or me?” Sue asked.

It was a fair question, but I didn’t mind because Sue turned out to be a good driver, even though I agree with our daughter that she goes too slow. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had been passed by a kid on a tricycle.

Still, the ride — to, ironically, our daughter’s house — was very enjoyable.

“I’m getting a chance to see things I normally don’t notice when I’m driving,” I told Sue.

“Like what?” she wondered.

“Pedestrians, red lights, stuff like that,” I replied.

She shot me a quizzical look.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” I instructed.

Since the day was beautiful, I also noticed birds, trees and a farm stand with a sign that read: “Pick your own.”

I suggested stopping so I could add the word: “Nose.”

Sue kept going.

I had a few little criticisms, like how she wasn’t watching out for idiots who I knew (not from personal experience, mind you) were plotting to get in a turn lane and cut in front of us when the light changed.

But otherwise, there were no complaints. In fact, I said, “You can drive from now on. And I am going to buy you a chauffeur’s cap.”

“Forget it,” Sue stated emphatically. “You’re the worst backseat driver ever.”

When we got to our daughter’s house, she wondered what took us so long.

“Mom drove,” I told her.

“How was Dad as a passenger?” our daughter asked.

Sue sighed and said, “He drove me crazy.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima