It’s not WoW-related, and it’s not an Airman Howell story. But we told it to Mania last night, she liked it, so before she bogarts it herself and gets credit, we’ll tell the story now.

(Note: Mania would never bogart our stories; she’s got good ones of her own.)

/daniel mode on

I was once a House Boy. Yes, anachronistic and outdated, but quite true.

Billy Joel used to live in Lloyd Harbor, Long Island, among other places. And while he was living there, he once remarked to his mother, ‘I need someone to watch my house while I’m in Oregon for a week.’ His mother happened to be friends with my grandmother, on my mother’s side. They talked, she volunteered me.

“Daniel?”

“Yes grandma?”

“Someone is coming this over this afternoon to pick you up and show you their house so you can house-sit for them next week.”

“Oh, who is it?”

“Billy Joel. Nice boy, makes his mom happy.” And off she toddled.

And sure enough, in a green Jaguar XJ8 - or maybe XJS, could’ve been - Billy Joel drove up to take me to his gated beach house in Lloyd Harbor to show me what he wanted done while he was in Oregon.

Pretty simple stuff, the details of the sitting are unimportant. What is important is that he had one of the very first satellite dishes. Black and mounted on a hillside overlooking Long Island Sound, the thing had to be 45-feet across. It got an amazing 15 or so channels. While I never got up the nerve to actually touch his piano, I did watch TV on the satellite dish.

Billy came home while I was watching. How’s the house, good good, etc.

“Wow! You’re watching TV!”

“Yeah, hope that’s OK, we never really talked about it.”

“NO! You don’t understand, I’ve never been able to get that thing to work! How did you do it?”

“Well, you look at your satellite guide, find the show you want, press the coordinate buttons on the box, the dish turns, see it turning out there?”

“Holy sh!t it turns!”

“Yeah, that’s how it acquires the different satellites. And once it does, you watch the show you wanted.”

“Well, I’ve had that system for four months and never seen anything on it before. What else can you do?”

Thus began my illustrious summer as Billy Joel’s houseboy. I cleaned his motorcycles, including a Harley with more spokes than I care to remember. I explained his CD-changer, cut the ivy from his windows and eves, told the landscapers how to care for the Pachysandra - it’s a weed, don’t over-fertilize it - and did small errands.

“Daniel, would you go get me some German potato salad?” and he tossed me the keys to his Jag.

“Um, I’m 16 and only have a learner’s permit… Billy?” but he was gone. OK, whatever. I hopped in the Jag, gingerly drove to the closest deli and got two pounds of German potato salad.

“Put it on Billy Joel’s account, would ya?”

“Sure thing, kid. He loves this stuff.”

Another time, his wife’s Jeep was running horribly fast and he asked me to look at it.

“Billy, I’m not a mechanic…”

I got in the Jeep drove it into the driveway, put it in Neutral… and the thing kept going. The idle was set so fast that it never stopped moving forward! I almost ran over a delivery guy.

“Tonight on Live at 5, Billy Joel’s houseboy killed a USPS worker in Lloyd Harbor today by running him over with an over-idling Jeep. Details later!” I needed that before my SATs were reported, yeah.

Well I didn’t know how to adjust the idle on a Jeep CJ-7, but I knew who did. Called him up, he came over, adjusted the idle, and that Jeep didn’t kill anybody, ever.

He bought a boat, a Boston Whaler. It was delivered while I stood on his dock. Pristine. Gorgeous. He asked me to clean it up before he took his wife on it. And he handed me Lysol and a bucket.

“Billy, this wood is teak. It needs a preservative and a cleaner, it’s called teak oil.”

“Whats wrong with Lysol?”

“It’s basically an acid. It’ll eat that teak like termites would eat your house. We have to get teak oil, boat polish…”

“Boat polish?”

“Yes, the salt water and air will discolor and weaken the hull unless we protect it.”

“OK, we need to go to the marine supply store, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go.”

And that’s how Billy Joel and I went to the Cold Spring Harbor marine supply store and bought two gallons of teak oil, two pounds of boat polish, and an anchor.

“Billy, your boat has an anchor.”

“This one is silver!”

“It’s stainless steel, not silver, it’s insanely expensive, it’s too small for your boat, you don’t need…” and he was gone again.

Late that summer, we had a really bad storm, basically a hurricane. If one has experienced a real hurricane, like we Floridians have, one wouldn’t call what hit Long Island a hurricane. But back then, all of us New Yorkers claimed it was.

Trees were felled, gardens trashed, just a big mess.

“What are we going to do about this place? The landscaper is never going to clean it up; he’s overloaded.”

“Well, if we had a chainsaw, I could get these big branches away from the door at least.”

“Chainsaw? Let’s go.”

And we piled in the Jag, went to a local mom-n-pop hardware store, bought a small chainsaw, eye protection, steel-toe boots, heavy gloves, overalls, a gas can, and the proper oil for the gas-oil mixture the little chainsaw required. Why we never took the Jeep to buy all this stuff or run these errands, I have no idea.

We got some gas in the red, portable tank, went back to his house, and unloaded in the circular driveway. I unboxed the chainsaw, read the instructions, got myself geared in the protective clothing and equipment, got that little chainsaw humming, and went at those branches like the professional logger I was. Which I wasn’t.

An hour or so later, I was tired and sweaty, my hands ached and my back throbbed. And then I heard,

“…mumble, mumble… cause?”

I stopped the chainsaw and held my head up.

“Have.. mumble, mumble… see clause?”

It was a she, and she was behind me. I turned around.

It was Mrs. Billy Joel, aka Christie Brinkley. In a towel. Period.

“Sorry to bother you, but have you seen my cat, Claws? He’s missing, the door is open, I think he got out.”

And Christie Brinkley, with a white terry-cloth towel, dripping hair, and nothing else, stood tall but shivering in front of her husband’s 16 year old house boy, who was wearing a full face-shield helmet, overalls, steel-toed boots, was covered in wood chips and sawdust, and was wielding a steaming, oily, smelly chainsaw.

I stood there, just a moment. The steam from the chainsaw and wetness of the downed trees created a swampy atmosphere and made the whole scene terribly surreal. Unable to think of anything witty or charming or in any way interesting, I softly spoke,

“I’m sorry, I haven’t seen your cat. I’ve been working on these branches…” and away she went. The chainsaw expressed it’s displeasure by refusing to start again for twenty minutes.

When I eventually arrive in heaven, and Jesus meets me with a cigar and an extremely nice port, I would not at all be surprised for him to say,

“Daniel, you led a good life. But I once sent you a six-foot tall blond sex symbol, dripping and naked, you had protective equipment and a chainsaw. And you got nothing. Sorry, dude, but the rules say you’ve got to go to Purgatory for a couple hundred years to pay for that f-up.”

I won’t put up a fight; He’d be totally right.