I am the proud owner of a brand new Sta-Rite Signature 2024 Stainless Steel Series 4″ Submersible Pump. The old pump was installed in the old well in 1984 and moved to the new well in 1992. Today it died. I pitched it behind the mock orange next to the well. Someday I’ll recycle it.
Tonight Beth remarked that the water pressure was low. I checked the breaker box and indeed the pump circuit was tripped. First I called an electrician, but the electrician was an honorable man and told me to call the pump guy. The pump guy is Leo Fahey from Brooklyn, Wisconsin. Fahey has been in the pump business for forty-three years, since his early thirties. My cellar is a shameful mess of course. A dirt floored, damp, cobwebby place with a single 100 watt bulb somewhere. You enter through a cellar doormuch like the one in Wizard of Oz, only not as accessible. When you get to the bottom step you have to get on your knees and clamber through a hatch. After a long step down, if you are over 5′6″ you have to bend over in order not to hit your head on the floor joists above you. When we scuttled out of that pit back into the light of day, I asked Leo if he was glad all his customers didn’t have cellars like mine. He grinned.
“Keeps me agile,” he said.
Pete Jacobson used to service our well, but he’s retired. Actually, I think it was the snakes in the old pit well that forced him into retirement. Pete is younger than Leo. Leo says he’ll hang it up if he ever burns out, but he doesn’t see that happening soon.
Leo gets up between 4:30 and 5:00 every morning and he’s at his shop by 6am. He says he starts to get tired toward the late afternoon, but then he goes home for supper and gets his second wind. It’s right around dinner time that guys like me call with our problems and Leo is there, taking the calls and coming out and pulling the pump or whatever it takes.
