Let’s begin with what we already know. Plumbers were the folks who began the slow march toward civilization: it began around 4000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, where mathematics originated, agriculture, astronomy, cursive writing, the wheel, the idea of cities, all well and good, but the breakthrough came when men installed latrines and drains in the temples and laid sewer pipes underground so that people no longer went back behind the altar to take a dump. This was the first inkling of civility — when you left the sacred hall and did your business in a pot and down the drain it went. A light came on. Politics continued to be barbaric, literature was servile, but plumbers created a modicum of dignity: you could go to church and not crap in your pants.
In due course they installed toilets in the castles so the king and queen, dukes, earls, etcetera etcetera, wouldn’t soil their underwear, and eventually they got around to us groundlings.
And the plain fact is: I’ve never written to a public official with the same urgency as when I’ve picked up the phone to call Mitch the plumber.
