The boy liked helping his father on the job. He was only ten years old, maybe eleven, but it made him feel grown up on those Saturdays when he carried the tool box for his father.
The father was a union plumber, and the weekend freelance jobs helped him turn the corner each month, what with five kids and the horrors of the Great Depression still vivid in his memory.
On this particular Saturday a pipe had burst in the home of a woman in their Brooklyn neighborhood. When they got there the floor was flooded. The first step was to shut off the main valve, and then it was time to bear down on the real work.
There was a lot to do - the removal of the corroded pipe, the cutting and threading of a new one, fittings and flanges and soldering…hours of work, with the boy mopping up water and doing whatever else he could to be useful.
What made it tougher was a bunch of kids, running around the house, getting in the way. Little kids, none older than five or six, and now and then they could hear a baby crying.
No wonder the woman looked haggard. Divorced? Widowed? She was on her own with a houseful of kids, and Christmas just weeks away.
At last the job was done. The woman turned to the plumber.
“What do I owe you?” she asked.
The plumber smiled. “Forget it,” he said.
She couldn’t believe her ears, but he wasn’t kidding. They packed up their tools and left.
On the walk home the plumber’s son was stunned. All that work, all those hours, not to mention the materials…had his father lost his mind?
“Why didn’t you charge her, Dad?” he asked.
The plumber waved his hand behind his back, to indicate the troubled home they’d just left.
“She needs it more than I do,” he replied.
That’s worth repeating: She needs it more than I do.
The boy understood. It was a lesson he never forgot.
The boy in this story is my father, Tony Carillo. He’s a lot like my late grandfather, the plumber. I don’t think my grandfather ever began a sentence with the words “I want,” which to me is the sign of a truly rich man.
His name was Charlie Carillo. I was named after him when I was born, 64 years ago today. Best birthday gift I ever got.
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