For a while, after my wife passed away, I would tag along with my neighbor and friend Neil the plumber when he went on house calls. Although I had also once been a plumber I didn’t, nor did I want to, do any plumbing myself. But riding along with Neil was a lot better than sitting alone in my empty house thinking about my late wife. And as a bonus I managed to meet some interesting people in the area. My ride along days were usually Tuesdays and Thursdays. I had my coffee group on Mondays Wednesdays and Friday’s so I already had something to get me out of the house on those days. As I walked home from having coffee one fine Wednesday morning I noticed that Neil’s panel van was parked at his house with the engine running. Neil came out the door and as he headed for the truck he looked my way and saw me, so he motioned for me to come on over. “Hey Dennis. I just got a call for an emergency repair call. I think it is at the old yellow mansion that you can barely see from the road that is just down the highway from the police station. You want to come along?” Neil asked. “Yeah, for sure.” I replied. I had heard about the old mansion from all the guys at my coffee group. The man who had originally had it built had been a wealthy lumber baron and he had built it sometime in the years between 1895 and 1905. He had a daughter and a son and the story goes that the daughter had been jilted by her fiancée and had hung herself from the rafters in the attic back around 1935. Her parents and her younger brother had lived in the house until the parents passed on and the son and his wife had continued living there. No one in town was sure if the son had worked at any sort of job to earn his own money, and it was speculated that he had just lived off his father’s fortune. The son had married a young lady from the city back in the later part of the 1940’s, and they had lived in the house until their deaths sometime around the millennium. They had one child, a daughter, who apparently had not been seen in public since before her parents had died. No one knew how old she was, but my friends had speculated that she had been born somewhere around 1950, not long after her parents were married. That meant that now, in 2017, it would make her around 66 or 67 years old. The curiosity about the old mansion and its lone reclusive occupant was often the subject of our morning round table discussions so the idea of me being able to fill everyone in on the state of the place as well as possibly meeting the lady occupant was rather exciting to me. I had heard all about the 1955 or 1956 Ford that was supposedly in one of the sheds. It was a rare Crown Victoria Skyliner model, and there had not been a lot of those glass topped cars built. Apparently, according to the rumors, this car had sunk so deeply into the mud in the shed that the tires had rotted away and the bumpers were resting on the bare earth. I wasn’t sure if I could manage to get a look at it, but anything was possible if I at least had the chance. Neil drove across the railway tracks and turned left towards the Police Station. He had punched the address into his GPS and when the GPS told him to turn right we could see that the iron gates that were normally closed were wide open, as if they were expecting us. As we turned into the heavily treed yard a younger male was outside, raking up some of the fallen leaves that had been piled under the snow that had recently melted. He looked dirty and unkempt, with long greasy looking hair. “Hi, I’m Neil. You called for a plumber?” Neil asked. He didn’t say a word, just set his rake against a tree and walked towards the back door. I could see that the house had been quite an edifice in its heyday but proper maintenance had long been lacking and the yellow paint could be seen peeling from the wood siding in a number of places. The fancy copings and the moldings had been painted white, and the white had fared a little better than the paint on the siding, although there were lots of places where the paint had peeled away. The door to the enclosed porch was sagging, and it scraped across the floor when he pushed it open. The place was not so far gone that it couldn’t have been saved, but it was going to take a lot of cash to bring this place back anywhere close to its former glory. We followed him into the back kitchen, where a lady was sitting at the table reading a newspaper. Her face was really close to the paper, and when she heard us coming in she put the paper on the table and looked up. She was wearing a pair of 1980’s drop temple glasses and they had what I would call fairly thick lenses. But the way she looked at us with her eyes peering through eyelids that looked to be almost closed told me that this lady needed lenses with a whole lot stronger power in her glasses. From the drop temple frames I figured that she had gotten those glasses sometime around the mid 80’s. My youngest daughter needed her first glasses when she was 10 in 1986, and that first pair had drop temples, but when they broke about 9 or 10 months later her second pair no longer had the drop temples. I knew how fragile 30 year old plastic frames could be and I wondered how this lady would survive if they ever broke. “Plumbers are here.” Greasy Long Haired guy told her. “I didn’t call any plumbers yet. Praise the Lord. They must have been sent by God.” She said. “You want me to show them where it is leaking?” GLH guy asked. “Please,” came her reply. GLH guy led us downstairs. The water heater was leaking out the bottom onto the gravel floor of the dark and dingy basement. Just then Neil’s phone rang, and he answered it quietly enough that I could not hear what he was saying. “That will cost you about $450.00 to replace.” Neil said after he finished his call. “Talk to Margaret.” GLH guy said and he lead us back upstairs. Neil told Margaret what his price was and she told him to go ahead. I wanted to say something to her about her glasses, as I had managed to become quite a fancier of ladies who wore glasses after my youngest daughter had to get hers, but I wasn’t sure what to say. “You really should have your eyes tested and get yourself a new pair of glasses before that pair breaks on you.” I managed to tell her. “Oh, I couldn’t go into town. I never leave my house.” Margaret said. I had heard of that before. I think it is called Agoraphobia and it is the fear of leaving a known safe environment. Not only did this lady think that the Lord had sent us, she was afraid to go anywhere. My friends were right when they said she was a bit crazy. Neil had agreed to go and get a hot water tank and hook it up when he came back with it and she had agreed to pay him the $450.00 he wanted. We headed back to the truck. “Dennis, can you do me a big favor?” Neil asked, “Sure, what do you need?” I asked. “That phone call I got when we were downstairs was from my real customer. Apparently we ended up one yellow house short of where we were supposed to be. Because of all the trees I had no idea there were 2 yellow houses in a row here. I was hoping that you could drop me off next door, and then go back to Town Plumbing Supply for a hot water tank. By the time you get back here I should have my real customer fixed up. Just don’t hurry.” Neil said. “No problem Neil. I should be able to be back within an hour. Will that do?” I asked and he told me it would. I was almost happy to hear that the crazy, very nearsighted lady wasn’t as crazy as I thought she was. It only took me 15 minutes to get to the plumbing supply store, another 10 to get the water heater purchased and loaded, and I knew I could be back to pick up Neil in under 45 minutes, But he wanted me to give him at least an hour, so I had up to 20 minutes to kill. I thought about it for a minute as I drove down the street. A left turn at the stop sign instead of a right took me towards my house. Then I ran inside and headed for the basement where my box of collectible glasses was sitting. I had no idea what I needed, but I grabbed a pair of -15.50D wide temple glasses. I had a pair of blended myodiscs that were in a young ladies frame that were a -17.50D in the right eye and -17.00 in the left, so I grabbed them. Then there was a pair of modern red and black plastic frames with wide temples and biconcave lenses that were around -20D that I figured were likely too strong but I took them anyway. At the last minute I found a nice pair that had a prescription of -18.50D for both eyes. They had a very narrow pd, so I wasn’t sure they would work for her but I took them anyway. Then I went back to meet Neil. He wasn’t quite finished so I waited while he cleaned up and then we went back to the old mansion. GLH guy was nowhere to be seen, but the gate was still open so we backed as close to the porch as we could and I helped Neil carry the new hot water tank downstairs. “Do you need me?” I asked, knowing that the answer would be no. “I’ll just go upstairs or out to the truck then. This basement is moldy enough that it is bothering my breathing.” I said and he told me to go ahead. I went back up the stairs and told Margaret that I would be going out to the truck but I would come back in and visit with her for a few minutes if she wished. She said that it would be nice to have company for a change, so I ran out to the van to get my little paper bag of glasses. I didn’t know what sort of lie I was going to tell her to explain why I had 4 different pairs of prescription ladies eyeglasses, but I figured I would try the old I collect glasses for “World Vision” trick. I brought the bag back in, and told her that. Then I had her try on the -15.50D glasses. “”They might be a bit better than my own, but I really can’t tell.” Margaret said. That indicated that they were too weak, and I then gave her the -17.50/-17.0D ones. She said that they worked a little bit better. Then I tried her with the -18.50D ones and she seemed pretty happy with the fact that she could almost see across the room now. Just for the heck of it I gave her the -20D ones and when she put them on she was ecstatic. “I haven’t been able to see this clearly since I got my own glasses new.” Margaret said. “How long ago was that?” I asked. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably half a lifetime ago.” “So that would be 30 to 35 years ago?” I asked. She agreed that it might have been that long. With the newer style of frames, and lenses that she could actually see with she didn’t look nearly as weird as she had looked at first. Actually, if she fixed herself up she could likely look fairly attractive. I heard Neil coming up the stairs so I put the other 3 pairs of glasses back in the bag and put the bag in my coat pocket. I didn’t want to let anyone else know about my little penchant for collecting glasses. “Will you come back and see me sometime?” Margaret asked. “I will if you want me to.” I replied. Specs4ever Feb 2017.