Boomers on the Edge
Before smartphones. Before social media. Before anyone thought to record the evidence.
Boomers on the Edge is a weekly storytelling podcast where two lifelong friends revisit the wild, reckless, and often unbelievable adventures of their youth. Kenn and Ron trade stories from the 60s, 70s, and 80s — the mischief, the bad decisions, and the close calls that somehow didn’t kill them.
From gritty Detroit bars and summer days on the lake to high school locker rooms and blue-collar job sites, every episode blends sharp improv, vivid memories, and outrageous true tales.
It’s unfiltered nostalgia — raw, irreverent, and laugh-out-loud funny.
If you like your comedy honest, slightly inappropriate, and full of “there’s no way that really happened” moments… welcome to the edge.
Boomers on the Edge
New Homeowners - Repairs
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When Kenn bought his first home in the 1980s, he quickly discovered that homeownership came with a lot more than a mortgage. Unfortunately, business school—and growing up—had done little to prepare him for the realities of home maintenance!
In this episode of Boomers on the Edge, Kenn shares three hilarious stories of learning the hard way:
- The Auto Shut-Off Valve Faucet – Kenn’s wife asks him to fix a leaky bathroom faucet. Unable to find the shut-off valve under the sink, Kenn assumes these “new homes” must have an automatic shut-off system. He loosens the faucet—and suddenly, a geyser shoots toward the ceiling!
- Phone Extensions and Electricity – Before cell phones, Kenn decides he needs a phone extension in his finished basement. While working on the phone line, he uses his teeth as a wire stripper, forgetting that phone lines carry a small electrical charge. The result? A shocking experience that sends Kenn screaming—and nearly flying across the room!
- The Sump Pump and the Flood – After a major storm, water begins backing up in Kenn’s basement and the sump pump refuses to turn on. He grabs a small bucket and starts bailing water by hand. Then his neighbor asks the obvious question: “Did you check the fuse?” Sometimes the solution is a lot simpler than the problem!
Three unforgettable home-maintenance disasters, one very inexperienced homeowner, and plenty of laughs.
Another hilarious trip down memory lane on Boomers on the Edge!
- Boomer rating: On the Edge.
https://www.boomersontheedge.com
boomers@boomersontheedge.com
Hey and welcome to movement on the app. Your host, Kat, and Ron. Let's get started. Hey, this is an interesting selection of music. Well, it's supposed to simulate like a hammer. Yeah. Somebody working. It's actually called home repairs, hammer, saw, and drill.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I get the hammering part of it. And uh, but we should get into some of these homeownership uh home repairs.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, you said you wanted to talk about some of your homeowner experience and your uh repairs. Yeah. And uh this was uh appropriate music for it.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So that's a good thing. Yeah, so I got married in 84, and soon thereafter, my wife says to me, Ken, you know what I would like for you to do? I go, what? She goes, Can you fix that leaking faucet in the back?
SPEAKER_03That's part of being a new husband.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. So I said, sure, I'll do that. So I figured there's gotta be a washer that's amiss, you know, broke.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, what was it doing? Drippy dripping.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, dripping. Yeah. So I got one of those right now, I'm working on. So I go and get some tools, you know, uh a little pipe wrench and this and that. And I gotta take off the valve, the the on-off valve for the water. And so the first thing I gotta do is get the hand the handle part that you actually grab, the chrome handle. Right. I gotta get that off of the shaft of the valve stem. Yeah, but I'm like cutting my fingers and stuff like that. That thing's like corroded onto that.
SPEAKER_03So did you have a lot of experience doing this? None. None what none. And your dad didn't teach all this stuff? No. Oh. And they didn't teach it to me in business school. Oh, right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Did they teach that to you at Michigan State?
SPEAKER_03No, no, but uh fortunately my dad did show us some of these kind of things.
SPEAKER_04Well, not mine. No, but so I finally get this darn, you know, knob off of this handle, and I'm going, okay, now that looks like I gotta turn the uh the valve to the left to get it off, you know. But I said to myself, You gotta shut off the shutoff valve. Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you can't have the water on.
SPEAKER_04You can't have the water on. So where's the shutoff usually located?
SPEAKER_03I just I'm literally working on a project at my house right now, and you go underneath the sink and you turn the two knobs off, hot and cold.
SPEAKER_04Exactly what I thought. Yeah. So I opened up the cabinet. There's no shutoff, Val. So I thought, What kind of house is this? I thought they must have newer type of uh they must have newer type of shutoff. They like auto shut off, they auto shut off. So I start I start trying to turn this thing, this uh valve out of its seat. No, I'm sorry I'm laughing, but I know it's not good, it gets worse. So I'm I'm I'm I can't this valve thing is not turning, you know. I'm like, is this corroded too? Yeah, like the knob was, anyways.
SPEAKER_01I'm turning it maybe because it's under pressure.
SPEAKER_04Maybe, but it's an auto shut off. So I can't get this. Well, it's a new house, so it doesn't have that old fashioned, yeah. But I can't turn it off with the wrench I have. So what do I do? I get a cheater bar.
unknownOh no.
SPEAKER_04The cheater bar gives you a lot more leverage, you know, it's basically a pipe that goes over the end of your wrench, and it really gives you a lot more levers. So it starts moving. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, this is great. Turn it to the left, lefty loosey, you know. I'm turning it left. That you learned. I did learn that somewhere. I'm turning it off. I mean, I'm twisting the and at some point the thing pops off the seat, right? And hot water. I mean, I'm talking it's really hot. Man, it's shooting to the ceiling. It's dangerous, I think. Shooting up to the ceiling and coming down like it's some type of a weird in-house geyser, like an in-house geyser. It's like the Ken Geyser. Yeah. And uh, and it's water is going everywhere.
SPEAKER_03And where's your wife at this point?
SPEAKER_04I don't she's somewhere in the house, but all I do is I start yelling at her name like she's got something to do with this, you know. I'm going, get in here. I can't believe this. And it's hot. Oh and it's steaming. It's hitting the ceiling and coming back down, a lot of it going into the sink, but splashing everywhere. Yeah. And I had to run down. Under full pressure.
SPEAKER_03And I knew somewhere in the basement was uh a they didn't have new alphabetic shutoff outside.
SPEAKER_04No, they had a whole house shut off somewhere. They had a whole water shut off of the whole house.
SPEAKER_03You realize at that point there might need to be a shutoff now? Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I so I turned it off.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I thought I thought you had sent your wife down to do. No, no, no, no, no, no. I just wanted her to know what was happening. Get her nowhere near the uh scalding water.
SPEAKER_04And uh so I I went downstairs, turned off the main water valve for the house, and then proceeded to make the fix. But it was not a good it was not a good thing. It was a learning experience. It was, but I I thought it, you know, since it wasn't an automatic shutoff. So so just should have been a curiosity. It should have been code and it wasn't caught.
SPEAKER_03We we talked about this story before. I was just curious, did you go back and figure out was there any what was the deal? Did they drywall over the shutoff valves or something? What was well that they must have been. I have no idea.
SPEAKER_04There was no there was no shutoff valve to be seen.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_04That's what they must have done. It must have been behind the back. That's the only thing that makes sense. It must have been behind the back of the cabinet.
SPEAKER_03Somebody, some genius must have drywall or or put the shutoff valves on the wall, yeah, and then cut holes through the cabinet and then push the cabinet in or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Because there must have been there.
SPEAKER_04So moving right along from this particular home repair. You know, when we were grew up, Ron, do you remember the phones we had on the wall?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, we talked about, I think we just talked about that in another episode. You had like a princess phone, I believe. Yeah, rotary. Or somebody did. Rotary die. And they were like weird 70s colors, like green, light green, some beige. So we had a beige, yeah. So only my dad would only want beige.
SPEAKER_04So another thing that they didn't teach me in business school, nor did my dad teach me, yeah, was electronics.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_04And I wanted to get rid of this rotary phone.
SPEAKER_03Regarding like phones, you're saying?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I wanted to get rid of the rotary phone. That was on the phone. You wanted to get rid of it. Okay. Because you were like limited to where you could talk by that little you know, spy room.
SPEAKER_03I think we were talking. I don't know if we said this in another episode, but at our house we had a big extension cord. Well, we didn't have that. You could go like, you know, 20 feet over.
SPEAKER_04But you had the fancy Chase Lounge and all that. You had all in that fancy little town we were in. We were the big fish. And you had that fancy little found out we weren't big fish when we went to college. Yeah. Wow. I always thought that the some of the stuff you had looked like it belonged in the Playboy mansion. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Not here and where we so yeah, we could sit on the Playboy uh Chase Lounge and talk on the phone all at the same time. Exactly. Because you guys are and drink pop. And by the way, drink pop for the kids who are listening. There was no such thing as a wireless phone and certainly not a cell phone.
SPEAKER_04Right. But I wanted to be able to move around the house like Ron, like Ron's family had the opportunity. Because you were moving up. But this is then your own moving up now that you were out of your own. My very own home. So you were moving up. We were moving up. My wife and I had a nice, nice, very nice home. And so this required, you know, I had to fit, you know, take the phone off the wall, the existing phone. Which meant there was a dry. What was your plan? Which meant there was a drywall repair involved. Ah, okay. Which that was handled with no problem. But then I had to like uh splice some wires.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_03Because you were trying to extend the how far it would go. Yeah. Yeah, okay. And I was gonna have a really long totally relocating it.
SPEAKER_04On a wall, though? Yeah. No, no, no, no, not on a wall. Oh. So I could place it on a countertop or wherever I wanted. Okay, got it. And it had a really total modern. Yeah, and it had a really, really long cord on it. So, but it required me to um drill a hole in the floor and do some wire splicing. Oh, okay. So one Saturday, my wife is she's working on her MBA with a study group in the house, and I go downstairs and I'm like, this is a good time to uh do the splicing. So she had some other people upstairs? Like six other women. Okay. And um I know that I have to like remove the shielding from the wire, and then I have to like twist them together, and I get I have to get tape or something like that and make sure that I have a good connection. And uh tape it up with electrical tape. So I go to start stripping the shielding on one of the wires, and when I made the little cut, they didn't line up. Like I didn't make a complete perfect circle. Yeah. And I had to like pull the wires up, pull the shielding off of the end of the wire, but it wasn't coming that well. It was kind of hard. And I was biting my fingernails at the time, so I couldn't really put my fingernail underneath of it. So, like a dope, I stuck this wire, which was a live wire.
SPEAKER_03And what were you trying to accomplish though?
SPEAKER_04I was trying to get the shielding off the wire.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I see.
SPEAKER_04And I just went with your mouth? Well, I was gonna bite it with my teeth and pull it off.
SPEAKER_03I see. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Well, I got a shock. Okay. And I'll just have you know that I'm not proud. I'm not, I don't even know if I should tell this story, but I'm not proud. They never taught us electronics.
SPEAKER_01Did you say you would like put it in your mouth? And then you like went flying over like into the wall.
SPEAKER_04Well, before I flew into the wall, I involuntarily yelped like a dog. Like I didn't say make a yelping sound.
SPEAKER_01So if your wife had looked downstairs, she would have saw me flying into the wall. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It wasn't really far, but I did, I it did jump me back a ways. And so it's like just you heard some noise. She heard some noise down there. She says, What's going on? What's going on? And I just went, I went, what was that? Nothing. So, anyways, I still feel like a dope for that one.
SPEAKER_03I like that one. I can always picture it in my mind.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So that was like uh improvement number two. So for the listeners, for the younger guys, they should be taking these notes on not what to do, right?
SPEAKER_04On what not to do. Yeah, right. Right. Look for the shutoff. It should be there. Don't stick live wires in your mouth. And thank God it was only 12 volts. I mean, what was I thinking?
SPEAKER_03I think you wouldn't have put a regular 110 in your mouth. Yeah, I would sure hope. Anyway, but I don't know what I was thinking. But you didn't think. I mean, in all seriousness, uh, in defense of you, I didn't really I think it was a while before I ever really understood that there was actually an electrical charge going through what I thought was nothing more than a like an audio line, you know, for the phone.
SPEAKER_04Right. Right. It's not just a string going to a can. Yeah, there's more to it. It's a low voltage, but so we move on a few more years. But that woke you up that day. Oh, yeah. So we move on a few more years. We have what the weather forecaster said was the hundred-year flood. Yeah, those come every other year, don't they? It seems like they're coming every other year now, right? They started like in the mid-80s. And we get them every 20 years.
SPEAKER_03The hundred year flood came about every 20 years, and now they seem to be coming every year or something.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So so we had one of these floods, and we're not home at the time when it's raining all get out, you know, cats and dogs. And I come home, I go in the basement, and my basement's flooded like a couple inches high of water.
SPEAKER_03Oh man.
SPEAKER_04What a bummer.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I hate that. I've I've been in a couple of those.
SPEAKER_04Where we grew up, they did not have sump pumps.
SPEAKER_03Right. That was a sump pump was an unheard thing in the 60s. Yeah, I think it has to do with 60s homes.
SPEAKER_04I think it has to do with what kind of uh terrain you have or how your ground is. And where we grew up, it was a very sandy.
SPEAKER_03I never saw a sump pump in my life as a kid.
SPEAKER_04Where we grew up, it was kind of a sandy, uh loamy mix of uh soil. And so that just means that the water was absorbed into the ground a lot easier. But where I lived, where I live now, it's uh a lot of clay. And so the water kind of sits on the top. It doesn't have anywhere to go, so it just goes wherever it can, it's not getting absorbed, so hence it goes into people's basements. I realized my sump pump's not working because how else is this, you know, why is my basement flooding? Because the sun pump's supposed to protect from flooding.
SPEAKER_03Like, yeah, if water starts to seep in, it's supposed to take it out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. So I I don't know what to do, so because I don't know anything about sun pumps. I didn't learn about sun pumps in college. And he didn't have one. I call the neighbor across the street, uh, his name is Mitch. Mitch. And I called him the mayor of the street because he always He's like the mayor of your street. Yeah, he had like all the keys there were older dude. Older dude returned.
SPEAKER_03I don't, you know, you told me this before, but I don't get the key part. Like why would you let this go?
SPEAKER_04Like, let's say well, one time you sure you can trust this guy? Yeah. Yeah. One time we went to uh a Thanksgiving get together across the state, and my wife thought she left the iron on. Oh, okay. So we were able to call Mayor Mitch and see if he could go and check out to make sure that it wasn't on.
SPEAKER_03Now, you don't think he might have been pulling some of that stunt that Pepper was doing at night. I I hope I hope not.
SPEAKER_04I'll tell you one other thing. I told him, I told him one time, I said, Hey Mitch, I said, um, I just found out from my insurance company. My homeowner's insurance company. What are you gonna say? You're laughing too hard.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I'm just gonna say, what motivates some guy to want to be in everybody's house? You know? I don't know. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04So one day I says to him, hey, my homeowner's insurance uh company said, if I have Deadbolt Lock, I can get a reduced rate, which is kind of cool. You know, I don't want to spend all the money on insurance. So I told this to Mitch. And he says, You ever put one of those in? I said, No. He says, Well, you know what? Just leave it out. He says, I'll come over one afternoon when I got so he can get in his house and get on your pillow.
SPEAKER_03No, but that was another reason if you would have put that deadbolt in and he didn't have access to it, it would have screwed up his whole program.
SPEAKER_04There was another reason right there why I he it was good for him to have the keys, you know. And he just kind of looked out for everybody.
SPEAKER_03It's a small price to pay for the services that he was providing.
SPEAKER_04That's right. Right. So, anyways, back to the flood. So I called Mitch. I says, Mitch, my basement's flooding. He's like, his wasn't. His something was operational. Okay. He I says, What am I supposed to do? He says, Well, you got to get rid of that water. Yeah. I said, Oh, yeah, like really, duh. So I go get a like a five-gallon pail, okay, and uh, and uh, we, you know, we your whole basement's full of water. Yeah, and we got leftover containers. We got a cool whip container. Oh, yeah, that's good. And I'm scooping, like, I'm standing by the sump up and I'm scooping.
SPEAKER_03I know you're pretty good at math. If you would have taken that that the cool whip, how many how many hours would that have taken, do you think?
SPEAKER_04I could have figured it out. Days? I could have figured that out. I love that.
SPEAKER_01That you could figure out that is rich.
SPEAKER_04That you're giving me some math crap. I thought you were well, anyways.
SPEAKER_02But I mean, you're so good at math. It's like, what that wasn't good. I knew it was gonna take a while. It was gonna take a while.
SPEAKER_04Days, and I was and I was probably at it for like 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_03Where were you scooping it out of curiosity? Into the sump pump?
SPEAKER_04Uh I was by the sump pump and I was scooping the water and putting it into this bucket, and then I have to dump the bucket down the drain, a different drain.
SPEAKER_03It's a multiple step process.
SPEAKER_04Man, it's taken a long time. And I'm figuring out Ron's math problem, what he's already figured out. This is gonna take me a long time. I am not seeing any progress whatsoever. And there might still be water coming in at this time.
SPEAKER_03I've I've been in that situation where we're using an electric pump and we're not seeing any progress.
SPEAKER_04So now I'm like 20 minutes into this thing, and my wife says, Ken, Mitch is on the phone. I go, really? And I he goes, Hey, Ken, have you checked your circuit breakers? Right. I said, For what? He says, Well, to make sure that your sump pump switch didn't go off. Yeah, there you go. Well, I didn't have electronics. I wasn't I was a new homeowner. I says, Well, let me go look. So I go downstairs, find the fuse box or the circuit panel. Sure enough, there's one that's off. And I flick it, boom. The sump pump comes on, kicking out, and I watch that I watch the water evacuate from the basement. It was great. No more little no more cool whip container with a pickle barrel with a five-gallon bucket. No way. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03So just so for the for the young guys, that's the third that was the third point of your phone. But I just but but what I what I do start using a cool whip container. Hey, I change, I change, I change. Change your I changed this. Oh yeah. Check your circuit breaker. Circuit breaker first.
SPEAKER_04And and I also always have a standby sump pump. Oh, you got double sump pumps? Well, no, I have one new sitting there. If I have to, if I run into this problem, I can switch it out real quick. Wow, okay. So, because I learned. But you know, back to that day when it was happening, like I was so happy I went over to see Mitch to tell him thanks. And he was a guy that was the payoff services. Okay, he was he was he used to collect stamps. Uh-huh. Uh and what was he doing with him? He had all these binders out with all these stamps. Okay. And he was looking at them and putting new ones away and stuff like that. And I sat with him for like two or three hours. It was murderous. Did you have to lick anything? No, I did. See, Ron's so good for taking things right to the gutter. I'm sorry. This guy's suspicious. I'm sorry. The lesson is, you know, study hard.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I'll make you make enough money where you can what they do teach you in college. Yeah. Yeah. And make enough money where you can then just pay to have some.
SPEAKER_03Do the services that you enjoy and not the ones you don't enjoy. Exactly. Got it.
SPEAKER_04Thanks for listening, everyone.
SPEAKER_03All right. Hey, thanks a lot. See you guys. Hey, thanks for joining us here on Boomers on the Edge. We hope you'll join us again. And until then, have a great time. Thank you.