Some months ago the hot water control in our shower cracked and started spraying hot water into the tub and onto the legs of unsuspecting bathers. Really hot water. We’ve adapted by draping a washcloth over it to deflect the hot water, but every now and then it slips down and you get a sudden jolt.
Our plumber has been unsuccessful in locating the needed part — called a bonnet nut — and we dread tearing out the wall to replace the entire fixture.
Finally, I’d had enough, so on a recent afternoon I ventured out to Noland Company, filled with resolve. There I was met by Montana Jacobs, a soft-spoken young man wearing an Alabama shirt layered over another Alabama shirt. His business card read “Inside Sales.”
That being the case, one would not expect enthusiasm for a consumer’s quest for a small part to go on a 25-year-old fixture, likely long out of production.
Not so. After studying my crude drawing of the part, Jacobs, 20, retrieved the catalogue and devoted quite a lot of time and energy looking for it. No fat commission was at stake, only a sale that, as it turns out, would be about $12.
After a quarter hour or so, I told Montana (“My mother loved the 49ers,” he explained.) I would continue the search online. He jotted down the number of a distributor to call if I was able to locate a part.
I found what looked to be the part and called the number Montana gave me, a manufacturers’ rep in New Orleans.
“Columbus, Mississippi, a beautiful town,” said the voice on the phone.
The fellow’s name was Walt Kenning, and as it happens, he owns the company and happened to pick up the ringing phone as he was heading out the door to the gym.
We got off topic pretty quickly. Walt told me he grew up in Metairie and lives in River Ridge, a community near the Huey P. Long Bridge.
I’m not sure how, but we got on the subject of college.
Walt allowed he had gone to LSU, where, as he said, “you go in dumb and come out dumb, too.”
“I didn’t come up with that line,” he said. “That was Randy Newman.”
As it turned out Walt and I have a lot in common, and we chatted on like old friends. We graduated from high school the same year, both majored in history and appreciate some of the same restaurants in the culinary mecca that is his hometown.
After we rambled on a while about our favorite history courses in college (his was a modern American history course taught by the eminent historian, T. Harry Williams, Huey P. Long’s biographer), I mentioned the bonnet nut.
“We’ve got it,” Walt said, “but you’re going to have to order it from your supplier in Columbus.”
The next day I phoned Montana; he said he would order the part. He agreed to answer a couple of questions for this column.
He told me he has lived with and taken care of his 88-year-old grandmother in Caledonia for six years, since he was in the eighth grade.
I asked him how long he’s been with Noland Company.
“Since Nov. 27, 2012,” he said. “I love it, I love trying to help people,” he added.
To be sure, that much is plain to see.
My quest for a rather insignificant piece of hardware led to encounters with two kind, patient and interesting people. As one who too often spends his day rushing from one thing to the next, Walt and Montana bestowed unintended gifts.
Now if we can only get that shower fixed.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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