You probably know about the Darwin Awards. They are given annually to the individual who has done the most to improve the human gene pool by removing his (stupidity) genes therefrom. The following occurred in 1998, when I was still keeping Mariposa in Biloxi:

I was planning to go to Biloxi today to polish stainless steel, and maybe to help anyone who happened to be working on our finger pier, but something came up.

It started several years ago when I began smelling gas around the valve for my fireplace starter. I finally shut off the gas up in the attic, figuring that some day I'd have to hire someone to tear into the cabinetry to get to the valve and line where the leak apparently was. But last week, while I was up in the attic cleaning connections on my cable TV wiring in hopes of getting better reception (some minor improvement, but not what I was hoping for), I noticed that there was not only a considerable clearance between the fireplace and chimney, and the walls, but there was a hole in the attic floor that looked big enough for me to get down into that space.

Of course, getting down would be only a start. It would be nice if I could get back up without having to cut my way out of the sheetrock into the hall. So yesterday I cut a bunch of slats to the proper length for nailing to the uprights to make a ladder, and prepared a bag of tools: slats, hammer, nails, screwdriver, saber saw, pipe wrenches, slipjoint pliers, vise grip pliers, an automotive trouble light, and my cordless telephone (just in case). I eyed the hole a few minutes, decided I really could get down safely, and probably back up, and headed down. Sure enough, and very thankfully on my part, I was able to nail up the slats to make the ladder to get back out of the hole.

I found out I could get back out shortly after I found out that the fine blade in the saber saw for making smooth cuts in wood really wouldn't cut the gas line. Since I hadn't brought a hacksaw down, I had to go get one. Getting out took some contortions and some careful movements, but I made it out into the attic in a couple of minutes. The toughest part was not falling on my face from the raised portion of the attic floor while trying to get a leg all the way out of the hole and then down to the regular-height portion of the attic floor. Half an hour later, hacksaw in hand, after considerable struggle in an awkward position, I had succeeded in sawing in two the short piece of pipe between the attic valve and the elbow leading to the line down to the fireplace. That line was mostly inside the chimney space, but the attic valve was outside where it was accessible from the attic ladder. Now all I had to do was to tighten all the joints inside the space, and then replace the line I'd cut with one that had a union in it. That way I wouldn't have to first unscrew all the joints all the way to the meter outside before I could make them all up again.

The short piece of cut line inside the chimney space came out nicely, so I started on the longer piece running back to the valve. I'd started to get out of the chimney space and into the attic first, but then decided I might be able to extract that section of the cut line from where I was. I broke the connection just a bit. When everything seemed okay, I went ahead with unscrewing the pipe. And that was where I made my bid for the Darwin Award. When the pipe came loose in my hand, I realized right away what I'd done wrong. The hissing noise and the smell of gas told me that, rather than unscrewing the remaining piece of pipe from the valve, I'd unscrewed the pipe and the valve from the line on the other side. I now had a wide open pipe dumping natural gas into the attic and the chimney space, all about six feet from my hot water heater with an open flame. An athletic twelve-year-old could not have come out of that space any faster. I was a Minute Man missile erupting from its silo. You've heard about one's life flashing before one's eyes? Well, all I could see while scrambling out of the flue was the headline over the article, "Local engineer opens up gas line in attic, spreading house and self over three-block area." What a stupid way to go.

In a matter of a few seconds I had the line and valve screwed back on. Then I shut off the gas at the meter outside, tightened the valve properly, and half an hour later relit the hot water heater for the night. Several hours later I managed to relax.

This morning I loaded up to head for Biloxi, but delayed my departure so that I could go by a local hardware store and get the new line with the union. While I was at it, I bought a new gas valve because I'd broken the lever off the original one when I inadvertently unscrewed it. The valve still worked fine, but it was no longer so clearly a valve, and it wasn't clear what one had to turn to open and close it.

I had intended to go on to Biloxi for the day, and finish the work on my gas line tonight when I returned. But I chickened out, especially after it took me nearly an hour at the hardware store. Something about they didn't quite understand that the length of the new line with the union had to be the same or slightly less than the length of the original piece. They kept wanting to make one new piece of pipe the same length as the two pieces I'd cut, and then add the remaining nipple and union. Anyway, I decided to come back home and finish the gas line instead of going to Biloxi.

After I had assembled the new line with the new valve, I quickly discovered that the new valve leaked very badly, so badly I could hear it leaking. That meant I had to go back out to the meter and shut the gas off again, as I'd had to do earlier to replace the old valve with the new one. I also had to completely disassemble the entire new assembly in order to get the new valve out and the old one back in. But about forty-five minutes later everything was back together, and a soap bubble test indicated the old valve and the joints I could reach easily were working fine. With the gas back on I relit the hot water heater, then lit the gas starter in the fireplace, and both worked well. Getting gas to the gas starter was never the problem, but it was still nice to see the thing light like it is supposed to.

I'd like to say that the system works perfectly, but I'm afraid there is still a slight leak in the gas starter system, probably in the fireplace valve itself. I'll know for sure after another couple of hours. At least I now have a union I can break that will let me work on the leaky valve. Or I may hire a plumber.

I'm confident I avoided being an entry for the Darwin Award, but that doesn't mean I'm completely out of the woods yet. I might still blow myself up, but as best I can tell now it would be a commonplace gas leak rather than unscrewing the wrong side of a valve right next to an open flame.

Maybe next weekend I'll work on the stainless steel and the finger pier.

mikebiggs02@earthlink.net