My Dear Cousin - Unclean Home

30th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

Where was I? In my letter of the 28th I had talked about the mistake I made trying to get the money I was promised for college. Expecting it to go towards the repairs to my home was half the issue, and the other half being a bad contractor who did the work with the cheapest crap he could find.

I’m going to have to say that one take away from that is that your home should be very clean before you call a contractor. I don’t know why, but I think my home being that much of a mess attracted that fellow. It could be that slobs are seen as gullible or that people who live in messy houses rarely hire contractors and don’t know what they’re doing. It could also be that I’m wrong.

One of the points I have to make is that (Pony Girl) said that you could get the whole house remodeled for what we were paying. This is not true, not done right in any case. If you know someone and don’t mind half ass work that takes forever to get done that could be true. I’m told she also has a bathroom that has been in the worked on stage for years.

The re-piping was ten thousand dollars which is what it was going for at the time in California. We had galvanized pipes which are the kind of pipes responsible for all the brown water you may have heard jokes about in sitcoms about poor people. That brown is rust from the pipes braking down.

I think maybe half a dozen times (Pickle) screamed at me “we didn’t need to get the house re-piped”. I would explain that the old pipes would have rusted into the valves and made the whole thing brake down. (Pickle) never believed me, but I told him to ask any contractor and he finally stopped bringing it up.

I made a mistake and got taken by a scum bag. It happens to all of us to be honest. I think to this day (Pickle) is still angry with me about it but that runs in the family. The last time I heard my father’s voice he was complaining about something I did when I was three and I was twenty six at the time.

Best,



Richard Leland Neal