The word “plumbing” comes from “plumbum,” the Latin word for lead. That’s a load of hooey. “Plumbum” clearly denotes someone who has a bum crack that is precisely vertical.

If you’re the type of person who enjoys perpetual torment, then repairing the plumbing in an old farmhouse is a gift that keeps on giving.

After my brother Les and his son Dustin installed new sewer lines in our family’s ancestral farmhouse, I thought that everything was both hunky and dory. Wrong-o, moose face!

The house’s plumbing seemed to work as intended. Nothing leaked, including the new toilet I installed. I was just a little kid when the bathroom was added onto the house. I recall watching in wonder when we flushed that original toilet for the first time. Where did the water go? It was a mystery.

I discovered recently that the bathroom sink’s drain wouldn’t drain. No problem. I’ll just give it a healthy dose of a drain cleaning liquid – the kind that’s powerful enough to dissolve its way to China – and we’ll be off to the races. Nope!

No problem; I’ll just clear things out with one of those coiled drain snakes, the type that’s driven by an electric drill and looks like the spring from a ballpoint pen.

Nope! After more than an hour of cursing and snake wrestling, I decided to conduct a thorough investigation. This involved holding a flashlight while sticking my head into the creepy, damp, dark, cobweb-infested crawlspace beneath the bathroom.

The problem quickly became clear. The original plumbers had installed a section of plastic pipe that was screwed into a steel elbow that was screwed into another section of plastic pipe. I would’ve liked nothing better than to ask those original plumbers: what the heck were you thinking? Why didn’t you just use non-corroding plastic?

Their answer would probably be, “Because it’s what was on the truck.”

So, for the first time in my 68 years, I entered the crawlspace. This involved climbing a six-foot ladder and squeezing through a small gap in the stone foundation. It was such a tight fit that it was impossible to carry my iPhone in the pocket of my jeans. There was barely enough room for my shoulders; if I had gained so much as a pound, my belly wouldn’t have fit.

As I wriggled and writhed my way through, I thought, “Oh, great! If I get stuck, the headline will read ‘Hide-and-Seek Champion’s Skeletal Remains Found in Crawlspace of Old Farmhouse.'”

Had there been a witness present, they would have clearly seen that I had a serious case of Plumber’s Butt. The combination of bellycrawling and the snug confines caused my jeans to slip well below the crack line.

My reciprocal saw was brought to bear, and its buzzing blade made quick work of the corroded steel elbow. The saw then charged onward and slashed a gash in a nearby copper waterpipe.

I hastily squirmed out of the crawlspace as the wounded waterpipe hissed at me in anger. Upon regaining my footing, I assessed the damages. They included a severely bruised ego and a patch of shin skin that had been lost to the cause.

An autopsy of the steel elbow revealed that it was completely plugged by a sand-like material, perhaps the sands of time. No amount of snaking or chemical solvents could have solved the problem.

I drove to our local hardware store and procured the materials needed to reconstruct the drainpipe and repair the waterline. Or so I thought. It’s been said that all plumbing projects require three trips to the store. You could easily double that number for me.

Resolving one problem inevitably led to another. I made so many trips to the hardware store that they stenciled my name on a parking spot and assigned me my own personal salesclerk.

After numerous jaunts to the hardware store and more forays into the creepy crawlspace than I’d like to remember, everything was in place. I repressurized the water system and nothing leaked. I ran water into the bathroom sink, and it swirled down the drain with a gratifying gurgle.

But wait! What’s that dripping sound? Crap. The bottom of the sink was leaking! A small crack was allowing water to escape, canceling my hard-earned victory dance.

Yet another journey to the hardware store. Yet another round of cursing and wrestling with plumbing parts.

At long last, I opened the taps and all the water behaved as it should. After chronicling my pipe perplexities to my wife, I asked, “Why does plumbing have to be so hard?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe it’s because we have hard water.”

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy,” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.