Paratrooper Plumbers and Other Tips for Surviving the Texas Freezepocalypse

HUMOR

We made it. Here’s how.

We were 7 days without water when the Paratrooper Plumbers dropped from the sky into our apartment complex.

Okay, maybe they didn’t drop from the sky. Maybe they flew into the Austin, Texas airport from Connecticut, Maine, South Carolina and Florida. You know, states that actually know how to deal with extreme weather emergencies.

However they arrived, it seemed like they parachuted into the complex, and swiftly spread out among the 15 buildings, like troops into a besieged city. While not turning wine into water, they did coax frozen pipes to cooperate again and water to flow. That makes them our miracle workers.

The previous 7 days, we had one maintenance worker for two days, then two briefly, one of whom was, pardon me, a dick. When we complained enough about him and the dark, cold, waterless conditions, Northland, who owns the complex, sent in the paratrooper plumbers.

How did we survive 6 days of cold and dark and 7 days of no water before our plumbing superheroes arrived? I’m glad you asked. Togetherness.

Togetherness isn’t a word you hear often referring to apartment dwellers. Unlike in New York, where if you manage to get a rent controlled apartment, you don’t leave until they carry you out, most apartments have a large number of transient people. Ours has people who’ve been here from 16 days to 16 years, and everything in between.

Two of my immediate neighbors have lived here for 16 years and 9 years respectively. I know them, but had never been in their homes, nor they in mine, until we were in survival mode. Okay, one of them, Nate Rice, had been in my home as my designated strong person to help me haul up heavy things like furniture I bought on Facebook Marketplace. He’s nice like that. I sort of kept him a secret, so everybody else wouldn’t bother him to do things.

He’s not a secret anymore. Not after a man in our complex, Nabil Yazdani, took it upon himself to knock…

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