Best Of

Big Joe Carraher was our go-to guy for boiler controls and electronics that no one else could figure out how to fix or employ correctly. From The Brooklyn-Queens border out to Eastern Long Island, baffled contractors, Master Electricians, and homeowners would come from far and wide to Joe's counter at Christ Plumbing Supply (est. 1810) in New Hyde Park.

Joe would hand draw a schematic for you and being in the business for 60 years would show you the single most important thing: interfacing ancient controls to talk nice with the state-of-the art. No one was better! Joe was all.about keeping costs down and reusing and repurposing what you had to work with...lessons he learned under fire in Vietnam.

On many occasions, we marveled at Joe flipping over a control, studying the circuit board with a magnifying 🔎 glass and then saying:

"Ok...pass me my soldering Iron."

Big Joe cut his teeth on the front lines in Vietnam repairing Tanks and APCs under fire and through treacherous mine fields From 1968-1970 Joe fixed, repaired and rebuilt M48A3 Patton Tanks, M551 Sheridan Tanks and M113 Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicles with The Legendary Blackhorse Regiment, 11th Cav.

Joe did his own taxes and anyone's he could help, built computers and could figure anything out. After service in The 'Nam, Joe learned Hvac and had his own very successful business in Brooklyn for many years.

Around 1999, he packed it in and became Co-owner of Christ Plumbing Supply with Chris Smith, where he held court at the counter for the next 25 yrs.

Joe and Chris are "Fambly" (John Steinbeck) to me. How blessed I am to have such High Caliber business associates who became Fambly? Life is hard, but Life is Good! Yesterday Joe was buried with Full, U.S. Army Honors 🎖 at Calverton National Cemetery. A Life lived to the fullest! Love you man, "Matty Boy"

I worked with a lady years ago who if someone didn't get her joke or snarky remark, she'd say, "I don't chew my tobacco twice." and leave it at that.

When I did home improvements/plumbing/electrical for a living I would find lots of things, tools, such as screwdrivers, ratchets, wrenches, pliers, hammers, pipe cutters, vice grips, tape measures, found a folding wooden ruler and still have that, speed squares, a t-square, a power drill, a cordless stick vac, rolls of all types of tape.

Lots of weapons such as knives, guns, boxes of ammo, brass knuckles. cans of pepper sprat and mace, slingshots, wrist-rockets and loads of mouse/rat/critter traps.

Lots of clothing items, sneakers and shoes of all sizes, even a wig and hats.

Pieces of trees (real and artificial), house plants, big wads of palms, like those big, long dried out ones Catholic folks in my family used to hand each other on Palm Sunday when I was a kid.

Bunches of wadded up chewed paper that looked like nesting and even tree branches, leaves, old disconnected BX cables and assorted wires.

Dead mice, dead squirrels, dead raccoons, dead 'possums, a couple dead kittens one time, that was sad. Don't know if they were born where I had found them or if their mother placed them there or if they had fallen down a transom.

By the time I retired in 2020 I thought I would NEVER have to see garbage and odd items in walls or floors ever again, but since all of our kids were grown up and out and in their own homes, my wife and I decided that we no longer needed the big 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom house we lived and raised our family in for 30+ years, which was also my families home for almost 60 years before that, where I grew up in in the 70's and 80's, so in mid 2021 we sold and moved into our current smaller home by that Sept..

About a year after we moved in, I decided that I hated the tiny old toilet that was in our one bathroom and couldn't stomach the plumbing mistakes that were everywhere, the no ceiling fixture, cracked plaster and ugly woodwork everywhere, but I really just wanted to replace the very small toilet, but when I pulled the old toilet out, half the 1"x1" ugly blue mosaic floor tiles came up with the bowl, so you know, then a whole project began.

I learned that a previous homeowner, who ironically was a fireman and raised his own family here back in the 30's and 40's, in 1950 "rebuilt" the first floor kitchen and second floor bathroom, which is right above the kitchen in our home after he had a kitchen fire!

I was told by an elderly neighbor who knew the guy very well, that after he had an electrical fire and got a skimpy insurance check, he decided to re-do the house himself. and I guess instead of replacing burnt, water damaged, cracked, split and scorched floor joists, rafters and beams, he decided to fill the entire spacing between each floor joist of the small 8'x5' second floor bathroom with cement, about 5000lbs of it, and poured it from heights of 2" to 6" above the floor joists (to level it out) all the way down to the lathing up in the kitchen ceiling below. I guess he though the cement would add some strength to weakened and very uneven joists?

I still can't figure out how all that weight stayed up in place for so many years and held the plaster ceiling below up, but I just had to cut it all out!

I originally thought that it might have just been leveling cement and thought "I could probably break that all off quickly and get down to the wood flooring, fix that up, throw a layer of backer board down and set down new floor tiles", but nope, there was no wood flooring!

The mosaic tile were mostly imbeded right into the cement.

Also buried or covered up in that cement/concrete floor were lots and lots of the original bathroom's hex floor tiles, wall tiles, tons of old shaver razor blades, metal and plastic bottle caps, old, burned disconnected BX cables, old plumbing fixtures, wads of grass and/or hay, pieces of rope, lots of broken bottle glass and a very old metal "Ronsonol" lighter fluid can, that I cleaned and kept.

All the cut off original 1910 water lines and 1950 post fire "new" water lines and steam radiator pipes were also covered up and buried within the cement, valves included!

I ended up filling about 75-80 bags with the concrete and carrying each bag out to the yard and put about 5 bags out with the trash every garbage day for about 4 months.

I cut out and replaced every floor joist, ceiling rafter and wall beam and also every inch of plumbing and electrical and built an entirely new and modern bathroom with a now level floor and also made it longer by 2 feet and wider by 1 foot, which was the most I could "expand" the bathroom.

It is so much nicer and larger now than it was.

One of these days I will transfer all the photos and videos of that project that are on my phone and get them onto this laptop I'm on, just so I can share all that with you folks, since much of the demolition and "discoveries" make for some serious head scratching and rib splitting laughs!

Sorry if it got a bit long, but I thought I'd share the stuff I've found and how I found some of it. LOL