This hot tub story a cut above

A friend told me he and a friend armed with Sawzalls cut up his 16-foot fiberglass boat in an hour. I didn’t call him a liar but I thought about it. Two hours maybe, but an hour to cut up a boat seemed like the opening line in a tall tale.

We were having a conversation about cutting things up because my hot tub quit. Not just my hot tub but my free hot tub. The one I was given 12 years ago by Bakersfield royalty, Elizabeth and Jack Saba.

“Come to Bear Valley Springs and pick it up because my parents don’t want it,” said their son, Mike.

They didn’t, I did. I grabbed my father and a few strong, innocent men, rented a low trailer for $200 and a crane for $250 to hoist it over the garage once we brought it home. Including the new patio, the new 5-foot-high brick planter and the 220-voltage line, the free hot tub cost about $8,000. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to spend. Twelve years later, after hundreds of soaks in 104-degree water, looking up at the stars and wondering how my life fit into it all, the nearly free hot tub was leaking in five places and wouldn’t heat past 91. Time for another free hot tub.

I have the same philosophy about hot tubs I do about field mushrooms. Don’t look for mushrooms, let mushrooms look for you. Look too hard and there won’t be anything free about your hot tub and you won’t be taking home any mushrooms either.

Send a request into the universe. Send it with a humble, non-grabby heart. Send it with no expectations although secretly your expectations may be grand and unrealistic.

My friend Leslie put it on her Facebook page and the next thing I knew I was talking to Liz, who was moving to Knoxville and had a hot tub that was looking for a new home.

“We’ve only used it about eight times,” she said. “My late husband got sick, had his leg amputated and couldn’t use it.”

I like a hot tub with a story. Especially a story that includes the words, “We only used it eight times and it looks practically new.”

They’d bought it at a home and garden show. Don’t most people? Bought it on a whim, in a burst of enthusiasm and with good intentions, but people who buy Jacuzzis fall into two camps: those who use them for four months and then never again and those who use them the rest of their lives.

Liz and I talked turkey and we made a deal. Liz was looking for more, I was looking for less but in the end, less and more met in the middle and we remained friends.

I found Jason, the spa mover. My dad is gone and I didn’t have the heart to ask friends and they’d say no anyway just like I would. The idea of moving the spa myself almost made me physically sick.

One problem. I still had the original spa in the backyard and I couldn’t stack them one on top of each other. The old one had to go. “Cut it up,” said the friend with the no-longer-boat. Can you do that? Cutting up a hot tub seems sacrilegious. What Jacuzzi manufacturers have glued together, let no man put asunder.

“People do it all the time,” he said. “Put the smaller pieces in the trash.”

It’s like dismembering a body. The smaller the pieces, the easier they’re to dispose of and the less chance you have of getting caught.

If there’s anything a guy likes to do more than build, it’s unbuild. Deconstruct. Destroy.

After unscrewing the brown plastic sides, breaking them apart and putting the pieces in the tan toters, I took out the Sawzall and started on the hoses, of which there were more than Medusa’s snakes.

I removed the heater, the motor and some other piece of machinery I had no idea what it did, but whatever it did, it doesn’t do anymore. Then I took a sledgehammer to the wooden frame exposing the fiberglass tub.

I was surprised. The Sawzall with the 10-inch blade sawed right through the fiberglass. Talk about fun. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning. I should have done this for a living. It’s a lot easier than writing dumb columns.

I loaded it in a friend’s truck because my truck wouldn’t start. I should think about taking a Sawzall to my truck. I slid the chunks of the hot tub off at the dump with the help of a guy who does tree service on the weekends. I like a weekend tree service guy almost as much as I like Jason, who delivered the new hot tub a few days later.

Not free but free enough.