By Fred Bretzke
Fred Bretzke is a full-time pipe trades instructor with SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary and the general manager of A&B Plumbing & Heating. He can be reached at fred.bretzke@sait.ca.
PLUMBING
HAIR, HAIR, EVERYWHE ERE! E COVID-19 has certainly given us many challenges. On the lighter side, it seems that before the salons started opening again, a lot of people were suffering from bad hair, which got me thinking about hair and some of the horrors that I’ve seen.
TRYING TO KEEP MY COOL Once a month, usually on a Monday night at dinner time in the Bretzke family, we would be sitting at the table and my almost-bald dad would claim that the family men needed a haircut. Now, remember, this was the ’70s, a time of bell-bottom jeans and long hair, and besides, my dad didn’t need a haircut, he was bald.
My cousin Glen had just trained me to look cool by growing my hair longer and parting it down the centre, like all the cool rock bands: The Doors, The B u s i n e s s
In my service days, it wasn’t unusual to get a call for a plugged drain in a shopping mall, so I started this one like any other, working through the most obvious causes first. I investigated the restaurants, since more often than not, it would be a greasy drain problem.
After checking the main restaurants in this mall, I realized that they all were cleaning their grease traps regularly, so I turned to my drum drain-cleaning machine and let it rip down the main drain to see what I came up against.
My brother, Carl, would succumb to Dad’s wishes and have his hair blazed off, and hence be called “bristle hound” for the rest of the school year.
M e c h a n i c a l
Sometime in the ’80s, when mall culture was at its height, I got a call proving that long hair isn’t always cool.
A lot of restaurateurs would try to save money by not getting their grease traps cleaned often enough, and grease would often pile up in the main building drain and back up in the washroom floor drains – or somewhere further downstream.
I think the German in him relished to see me suffer as he talked about giving me a brush cut. Anxiety would take over my whole body. All my friends had long hair. I couldn’t show up to school with a brush cut.
20
AN UNEXPECTED TWIST
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My trusty drum drain cleaner had heavyduty power; it even came with a clutch. These machines can be powerful and dangerous, and while accidents will teach you a lesson, these machines can really hurt you if you are not careful. I once had the thick cable from one wrap
