LETTERS: BUD MONROE ENJOYED HIS WORK, AND WE PROFITED

To the editor:

On a sunny Saturday afternoon as I strolled along Bellevue Street, I was puzzled by a stream of water flowing along the curb. As I traced it toward the source I became apprehensive. Muddy water was gushing from a mysterious hole. When I reached my own house, the phone was already ringing with calls from my tenants to tell me there was no water.

Bud Monroe's wife told me he was in Bollinger County, but she would reach him. An hour later he arrived on a backhoe. His son followed. The plumbers stepped into the nearly chin-deep water. The leaking supply line was, of course, at the bottom of the lake. Bud had done the work in this house 20 years before. With an array of plugs and faucets they removed the section with a leak the size of a dime, and soon the tenants had water again.

An earlier error had been the cause. Someone changing a meter had inserted a steel 12-inch section in the middle of the copper supply line a no-no in any plumber's Bible creating a kind of battery. Electric corrosion followed. Bud was properly indignant, as was I, but the harm had been done.

Our community survives because of courageous fellows like Bud. We became the best of friends, and I enjoyed talking with him about hot-lead joints more than hearing lectures on the differences between Italian and English sonnets. He knew his work was dangerous. Life is filled with dangers. He could have retired. But he enjoyed work more, and all of us profited. I build for my friend a private memorial in my psyche.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau