Our basement stank.
It was dirty and cluttered as well, but the odor was more than dirt, more than damp funk.
I pretended not know that foulness so profound must come from secrets, from death.

Bravely, I stood down in the center of darkness.
“What is the source of this smell?” I asked out loud.
I repied, “It seems to come from eveywhere.”
Moving around didn’t help.
Opening the back door did release some of the pressure, but it didn’t last.

“It’s unpleasant even just to be down here to clean, even wearing a mask.”
“Yes, it’s unpleasant. So what are you going to do? How do you go about this?”
“I can just start getting rid of things, thowing them away, that might help.”
“Do you think that’s the best approach?”

I don’t talk out loud to myself often.
In the car, sometimes.
I talk to myself all the time in the basement, however.
It’s a different kind of place.

“No, thowing away random things doesn’t seem like a good plan.”
“What’s a better plan?”
…
“What’s a different plan, then we’ll see if it’s better or not.”
“We could burn incense.”
“Would that help?”
“It might.”
“Really?”
“It’s a different plan.”
“Is your thought to cover up the stink with the smell of smoke, or do you intend the burning as an offering to please the unsettled spirits who haunt the vapors, Victorian-style?”
“Why not both?”
“Okay, that’s an idea. I’ll start a list.”
“Good, good. Lists are good.”
“Yes, they can’t say we’re not working if we have a list.”
“What’s on the list?”
“Trash everything, burn incense.”
“Need more, more ideas, more good ideas.”
“High-velocity industrial ventilation fans.”
“Keep going.”
…
“Nothing else? No other ideas?”
“It’s really gross down here? Do I have to do this? Is it even safe to be down here?”
“Get hold of yourself.”
“No, really, what if the stink gets into my lungs and grows there?”
“Stop! You’re letting yourself get carried away.”
“Am I? Maybe I’m just being prudent.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you would be.”
“Why is it so important to confront this now? Can’t this wait?”
“You need to be able to work down here, to fix things.”
“Also, I don’t want this smell in the house.”
“Right, right, okay, uh, any idea, any idea. How can I get the stink out of the basement?”
“Cleaning. I need to clean.”
“Three things on the list so far, and none of them are cleaning.”
“That’s not so, ventilation fans clean the air.”
“Well, not really, they would just suck in new air.”
“Whatever, you get my point.”
“Vents are air, the incense is fire, trash goes in a landfill, which is earth…”
“I’m missing water.”
“Water, yes. An elemental approach, this sounds more like you. Also, water and cleaning go well together.”
“And we have a utility sink right here!”
“Yes, that’s fortunate, but…”
“But what?”
“Why don’t we use the sink?”
“We do, I use it to wash my hands sometimes.”
“But not more than that? Not on the scale we’ll need for the whole basement.”
“No, well, because it only has the little French drain. It can only handle a tiny bit of water at a time, then it backs up, floods and becomes a mess unto itself.”

I walked out the basement door to get some air and think.
“If I had heavy gloves, a dozen stiff brushes, an endless supply of scalding hot water and concentrated soap…”
“Yes, if you had all that…”
“I don’t know, I feel like that would be a useful set of things to have for this…”
“For this… mission?”
“Project?”
“Whatever, it’s hard to tell the difference with you.”
“Mission versus project is probably not an important distiction to make right now.”
“Granted.”
“With a functional, high-volume cleaning process, I could throw away some things, clean others, then methodically go from place to place in a pattern, cleaning and removing, investigating as I go, responding to what I find.”
“Yes, well, I admit, that does seem a promising approach, and I like that you’ve used the word ‘process’ in the medical sense, but you could execute that same strategy without a drain for gallons of the gallons of disgusting soapy water you’ll create?”
“Could I? Not really, no. I can wipe things off with spray cleaner and paper towels, but that just seems inadequate, and would produce a high volume of paper waste.”
“You feel like you need the hot soapy water to move forward?”
“Maybe, kinda, I don’t know for sure. It seems like it would help.”
“And we have soap.”
“Yes, big jug of Simple Green, right there.”
“And there’s hot water right there?”
“Yes, utility sink, copper pipes, scalding hot water, ready to assist.”
“And you have a bucket?”
“Yep, good bucket, right there. Good bucket.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The drain.”
“Right, the drain. That’s the problem.”
“The drain is the problem.”
“Lousy drain.”
“Maybe it’s the drain that stinks?”
I kneel down to smell near the drain.
“No, the drain actually smells fine.”
“So how is the drain the problem?”
“By only handling a little bit of water at a time, it prevents me from cleaning with enough hot soapy water to make a process.”
“The drain will not handle the quantity of dirty water you think you need to create.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not a small job.”
“Okay, so, how can you work around the low-capacity drain?”
“Sometimes, I slide a basin under the utility sink drain, let it fill up, then carry it out the back door and dump it in the woods.”
“That’s an inconvenience, though. That’s not really a blocker.”
“It’s enough of a pain that it has prevented me from cleaning in the past.”
“But you could make that work by just applying more effort. You could simply carry a hundred basins of water into the woods if you were not so lazy.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Stop being so damn lazy, problem solved.”
“Actually, there’s more to it than that.”
“Is there? Sounds like rationalization to me.”
“Maybe, but I haven’t even tried to articulate my thought yet.”
“Okay, let’s hear it, but I know you, so I’m naturally suspicious.”
“Put my laziness aside for a minute, even if I were energetic, fit and completely committed to doing whatever it takes to clean out this basement and make it smell better… Even if I carry ten thousand basins of dirty water out the door and into the forest…”
“Go on, go on… you lazy sack.”
“It won’t last.”
“What!?”
“The basement won’t stay clean, no matter how good a job I do now. It’s going going to get dirty again, musty again, and sooner or later, I’ll need to clean it again. If all I do is carry hundreds of basins of water across the yard to the woods, I won’t be in any different situation then than I am now.”
“Sounds like rationalization to me.”
“I can put the extra effort to carry all the water out now, but future me isn’t going to want to do that. He’s going to want to be able to clean down here with hot water and soap, but not have to carry every drop of it across the back yard.”
“Meh, I don’t like our chances.”
“Why not, what’s stopping us?”
“Us?”
“Whatever, you know… I, me. What’s stopping me?”
“The drain, apparently.”
“But that could be rationalization.”
“Right, and we don’t want that.”
“No, I don’t need any more of that.”
“What do we do when we suspect rationalization?”
“Ask someone else.”
“Yyyyeah, I, uh… I don’t like the idea of pulling anyone else into this thought process right now.”
“Oh? Are you ashamed?”
“No, more like, I don’t know, ‘disgust’?”
“Again, I don’t think that’s an important distinction for us to make right now. The point is, it’s ego defense, right? You don’t want to ask anyone if you’re rationalizing because you’re protecting your ego.”
“Am I? I think maybe I just understand that nobody wants to talk about the drain in the basement.”
“Sounds like ego to me.”
“Maybe.”
“Look, this isn’t helping. The basement isn’t getting cleaner by you standing down here talking to yourself. You’ve been down here 20 minutes. You haven’t done a single productive thing.”
“I opened the door.”
…
“And I had an idea.”
“You did? I don’t remember any idea.”
“I’m sure I did. Check the notebook. What does the list say?”
“Throw everything away, burn incense, high-volume exhaust fans.”
“Those aren’t great.”
“They’re you’re ideas.”
“I realized the drain was the problem. That should go on the list.”
“You tried to pin all this on the drain, yes.”
“But that does seem like rationalization.”
“Seem like?”
“Get a hold of yourself. This is the basement, not therapy. Focus on doing.”
“Some of this mess is just simply trash.”
“So get a trash bag, fill it with what’s obviously trash, take it up to the street. Maybe more ideas, better ideas, will present themselves as you go.”

During several trips to the street with bags of trash, three realizations presented themselves, which I eagerly recorded in my notebook as:

  1. High-volume drain is worth having because it allows a sustainably clean workspace in the basement
  2. Moving water is a problem solved by either gravity or pumps
  3. Two sump pumps on hand, neither work

I drew two solid lines under that list, then wrote in all caps, “TRY TO FIX !!”

It took me an hour to clear off enough of the workbench to begin investigating a sump pump there. When I went to get one of the pumps, I said, “Which one is more likely to be fixable, the 6 horsepower 1990’s model that worked well in the old house until it stopped working a few years ago or the 2 horsepower 1950s garage sale special that never did anything?”
I grabbed the newer pump, took it to the workbench, plugged it in and lifted the float to trip the motor, which came on instantly.
“That’s good, but does it move water?”
I filled a bucket with water, sunk the pump in it, ran the pump drain hose out the basement door, plugged the pump in and tripped the float. The motor ran, but no water moved through the hose. Not a drop. I unplugged the pump, then spent 45 minutes taking the housing apart, meticulously keeping track of every screw, taking pictures with my cell phone, making notes on re-assembly.
In the heart of the pump, the impeller, the blades that turn to move the water, were missing entirely. The shaft was there, and it turned when the motor ran, but there was no impeller, so it just spun in the water and did nothing.
“Must have broken off.”
“That could be replaced,” I said.
“I could try to order a part online. I’m sure there’s a model number on it somewhere.”
“Or we could make a replacement.”
“Or take the impeller from the other sump pump.”
“What are the chances it would fit?”
“I don’t know, we should check, at least.”
Two hours later, the old pump was disassembled next to the new one. The rusty old metal impeller was nowhere near the same size as the impeller housing in the new pump, and the shaft itself was three times as big on the old pump, so the impeller I had was entirely incompatible with the pump that ran.
I spent the rest of the day, several hours, making prototype replacement impellers for the new pump from parts of old fans, with radiating cuts into disk washers, by an assembly of cavitating spoons.

That night, after a long shower to remove the stench of having spent the day in the basement, I had the idea to at least try the old pump in the morning to see what was wrong with it.
The next morning, I put the old pump back together a bit, then plugged it in for the first time. Nothing. Didn’t even flinch. 5 minutes of investigation revealed the root cause: the power cord inside the top of the pump had been yanked off the connection posts on the top of the motor. Replacing the cord with a new spare cord took 10 minutes. Eight of those minutes were spent triple-checking the seal to make absolutely sure it was completely water tight, even at pressure.
I sunk the old pump in a bucket of water, plugged it in, tripped the float, the old motor spun to life, the drain hose tensed up, and a thick stream of water shot 30 feet across the back yard, arcing into the woods. The old pump drained the 5-gallon bucket in 9 seconds.

I felt like a success, so I sat down to celebrate.
“I fixed the old sump pump.”
“Yes, you’re very clever. It wasn’t really broken, and you wasted an entire day trying to fabricate a replacement impeller for the new pump, so that turned out to be wasted time, and now what are you going to do? It still smells like Satan’s anus down here.”
“Now I can put a bucket under the utility sink, wash dirty things with hot water and cleaner. When the bucket gets full, the pump will come on, pump the water through the hose, out the open door, across the yard and down into the woods.”
“Way to kill the world, jackass. Pump your filth out into nature. How do you live with yourself?”
“That’s probably a fair point.”
“It does sound valid.”
“Yes,” I wondered out loud. “Or is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the filth is kind of nature too. I mean, it’s dirt, mouse droppings, dust. That’s all natural stuff.”
“What about the Simple Green, the cleaner? That’s nasty.”
I read the bottle, “Says here it’s biodegradeable.”
“That’s meaningless, and you know it. This stuff is probably the worst horrorshow of concentrated toxic poison man ever produced.”
“Maybe. Okay, I won’t buy any more, and I’ll dilute what I have as much as I can, but this is 20 years old. I’ll wear gloves. I need some kind of soap, or I’m never going to have a useful basement.”
“Also, instead of pumping it out the door, you could route it up into the sewer.”
“That all the way on the other side of the basement.”
“Yeah, well, that would be better than just blowing it all out into the yard.”
“Okay, let’s compromise. How about if I get it going out into the yard for now, then later, I’ll work on getting it into the sewer?”
“Agreed, but I’m writing that down in the notebook so you can’t deny later that you agreed to do it.”
“Fair enough.”

It took me two hours to disassemble and remove the utility sink, install the bucket and pump beneath it, make sure the float was free to move, line up the drain with the bucket, and route the power cord to an outlet above the sink. At that point, I realized the hose was not long enough to reach across the shop floor and out into the yard.
I spent an hour trying to splice together two different size hoses with the single hose clamp I had on hand.
“Why don’t you have a decent collection of hose clamps?”
“There probably are more around here, buried in all this muck.”
“Why don’t you look?”
“Because it’s disgusting?”
“Look, if this is worth doing, it’s worth doing.”
“You’re right. I should spare no effort in finding a hose clamp right now. Am I really committed to making this work or not?”
“Go get’em Tiger.”

I put on a mask and gloves, then dug through dozens of boxes of unsorted hardware. I found a mouse skeleton, a cache of walnut shells and three hose clamps, all different sizes, none of which were large enough to fit around the sump pump drain hose.
An hour later, I finished threading two hose clamps together, the screw gears of each one biting into the strap threads of the other. I spliced my drain hose together with that contraption, filled the bucket water, threw the hose out the door and plugged in the pump.
The hose tensed, my hose clamp held, except for one small, pinprick-sized leak that shot a little water out when the water in the hose was under pressure.
“Not bad,” I said.
“Good enough.” I agreed.

I spent an hour putting everything together, leveling the sink, resetting the wiring, routing the hose neatly. I was wrapping up. I had disco music playing, I was washing out a mop head in the sink because I wanted to leave it to dry when I left. I heard water splashing under the sink.
The bucket was full, water was pouring out onto the floor. The pump wasn’t coming on.
“What the hell?” I asked, turning off the water.
“It’s plugged in, the power is on. The float is free to move.”
“It’s not running.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“This is getting tedious.”
“Getting? Bitch, this was tedious yesterday.”

I unplugged the pump, disassembled the sink, carried the bucket out, dumped it, dried out the floor, put the pump on the bench, and disassembled the power cable housing, expecting water inside the housing and a short circuit.
“It’s bone dry.”
“Agreed, it’s bone. Plug it in.”
I did, and it started right up. Cold mop water shot everywhere.

I showered and changed my clothes, made a pot of coffee, then rolled up my sleeves and went back at it. Four hours later I realized that one of the six outlets had failed on the power strip I was using the power the lights and pump at the utility sink.
The sink lamp had been on the whole time, but when I unplugged it and plugged it into the outlet the pump had been on, it didn’t light.
I re-assembled the sink, bucket, pump, hose, cords, lights and drain again, plugged the pump into the working outlet, filled the bucket, the pump kicked on, dirty water shot out the basement door, and the pin-prick leak spurted water out near the hose splice, so all was well.

I cleaned with hot water and a stiff brush for several hours. The next day, several hours more. As I went, I found and resolved dozens of ghastly corpses festering in boxes and rotting in defunct nests. Nature’s dark reclamations were happening all around me, venting their foul gasses, radiating pungent decay. Much went to the trash, some went for cleaning, but all would eventually yield to the combined effects of water, cleaner, heat, fans, bleach, and light.

The workshop healed. There’s a different energy down there now. It’s sustainable, possible. There’s an inviting sense of potential there, drawing me in to create, repair, and maintain.