ELECTRICIAN RECOMMENDATIONS
Twenty years ago when I was rehabbing my first house in University City Village I was installing a particle accelerator and an atom smasher in the basement, not to mention the half dozen magnetic resonance imaging contraptions (for research purposes only) up in the attic. Back in those days the MRIs were the girth and configuration of King Tut's sarcophagus and demanded a hell of a lot of juice and I was concerned that the antique wiring in the stately and elegant old Victorian might not stand up to the demands of the equipment. At that time Buck Mulligan and his crew came highly recommended by none other than UC Fresh Princess Adeline Dutoit so I gave them a call. They arrived promptly and courteously, unloaded their tools, and then proceeded to take a coffee break which lasted most of the following week. I say "coffee" advisedly because although I don't indulge in alcohol myself the stuff in their cups smelt conspicuously like Irish whiskey.
At last they were prepared to go to work. Buck, plump and sweating like a stuck pig in the preternaturally torrid Philadelphia summer heat, listened carefully at my walls and then advised me sotto voce that he had heard the footprints of a gigantic hound. He unsheathed a whacking big sledge hammer and began to smash large holes in the plaster. When I timidly protested, he assured me that while such electrical work might result in a little damage, I could easily spackle it up by myself afterwards, or hire him and his crew to repair the walls for a modest fee.
Soon the whole crew had jumped animatedly to their work with coarse cries of "spectral hounds" and "purple elephants" and "faith and begorrah! destroy the bastards!" The air was full of dust and splinters and Irish curses, so I retired to my Winnebago parked safely in the back yard, turned up the air conditioning, and listened to Stravinsky on the headphones.
At length Buck came out, tapped on the door, and when I opened it to him, exhibited a large, ferocious and mangled ferret. "There's yer problem right there, mister!" he proclaimed.
"I see," I stammered, taken aback. He stood there meaningfully, until I divined that he was waiting for a gratuity, so I handed him a sawbuck and he tossed the corpse over the barbed wire into Cassidy's yard.
"Er, how long do you think this is going to take?" I inquired nervously.
"Twon't be long now," he said proudly. "Now that we've found the fricking ferret in the works, no more than a fortnight, I'd say."
"Well, do try to hurry," I said. "I'd like to have my particle accelerator up and running by the end of July, at latest."
"No problem, sirrah!" He took off his greasy Yankees cap, made a low bow, and toppled over. When he regained his footing, he seemed to be waiting for some encouragement, so I slipped him a Benjamin and retired into the cool of my Winnebago and put on some Shostakovich.
By the time the crew left in late September the house was a shambles. I consulted an architect from the University of Pennsylvania and upon her advice, and the payment of a hefty bribe to the University City Historical Committee, razed the place to its foundations and replaced it with several decorous white trailers and a pink flamingo.