The first part of this month’s title is a quote by actor Clint Eastwood at the end of one of his Dirty Harry movies. These movies were made in the 1970s and 1980s and featured Eastwood as a San Francisco police detective who got the nickname Dirty Harry because his name was Harry and he was given a lot of difficult or “dirty” jobs. He made this comment in the movie after dispatching a crooked cop played by another fine actor, Hal Holbrook. Recently, I had a couple of — if not “dirty” jobs — difficult ones where I had to realize my own limitations.
On the first job, I got a call from a customer who said, “John, my pump is coming on and off every two or three seconds and has been doing this all night.” This customer is a widow who operates a small farm and specializes in horses — boarding, lessons and so forth. She has a 5-inch PVC-cased well that was drilled by others before I acquired her for a customer. This is equipped with a submersible pump and a captive air tank in the basement of an old farm house. I installed both the pump and the tank.