Billy told me it was the coldest winter Tilghman Island had seen in 100 years. This was while we were discussing the cracked water pipes he found under our house.

I don’t know if it was the coldest winter in 100 years, but I know it was damned cold for lengthy periods of time this year. The kind of cold that just wouldn’t let up. Parts of the Bay froze in early January. Several people had frozen or cracked pipes. Our home on Tilghman was built in the 1890s, and like most older homes, it has any number of issues, water pipes being one of them.



Everyone needs a Billy in their life. He’s the kind of guy that can do just about anything. He’s well known in our community and is everyone’s friend in the winter time, when pipes are likely to freeze. In addition to plumbing, he’s done just about everything. In his past, he was picking cotton at five years old, started laying brick at eleven, and was roofing at twelve. He helped his uncle rebuild a house when he was fourteen . In other lives, he’s been a maintenance man, the foreman of a factory, and delivered computer paper from Philly to the Bronx.

This year, he’s had a bit of tough luck health wise. He had surgery on his knee and is still in a brace. He was also sick with a virus that he probably contracted crawling around under old houses in freezing water. He lost forty pounds in two weeks with that virus. Despite this, he continues to respond to the calls that come to him for help.

He fixed one of our broken pipes in early January, but it turned out there were additional problems. This time he had to go under the house in our two foot high crawl space. A feeder line had frozen and cracked, as well as a line to the hot water heater. Oh, and a line to our washing machine that he had to access through a wall.  

When we arrived yesterday, he’d fixed all of the pipe problems, and already drywalled back over the pipe going to the washing machine. He’ll paint the drywall soon. He also pointed out that we’d lost several shingles in the big windstorm, and he’d take care of those next week. We discussed making some more permanent changes to the pipes under the house this summer, as well as cleaning up the accumulated “stuff” that was under the house. He already knows how he wants to redo the pipes, so they will be less likely to freeze in the future.

Everyone needs a Billy in their life. I’m sure glad he’s in our’s.