Farewell To The Plumber

The "real" White House Plumber" died. Reds Arrington worked in the White House from '46 to '79 and was plumber to many presidents. He liked Nixon and Eisenhower. Seems that he could have done without a certain ill tempered Texan, however:

The one president who took the plumbing far too seriously was Lyndon B. Johnson. "President Johnson started right in about his shower when he moved into the White House. He said, 'I don't have any pressure, for one thing,' and that he wanted it just like the shower at his Georgetown home," Arrington said in the Life interview. "So my assistant and I worked on his shower, and the president tried it and said, 'That was nothing.' Then he said he wanted body sprays all around, not just overhead. He wanted one on the floor, too. This wasn't for his feet — he wanted it to hit up his rear," Arrington said. When he was experiencing trouble adjusting the shower, he felt the full fury of Johnson's legendary temper in a three-minute phone call that concluded with the president slamming down the phone. Normally, calls conveying the president's wishes came from the chief usher at the White House, but not this one, Margaret Arrington said. "We have flunkies in Johnson City that can fix it, why can't you? I don't want any change in pressure when I go from the overhead to both. Bring in the engineers, anybody, but have that thing fixed by the time I get back from Texas," boomed the president, as recalled by Margaret Arrington. To inspire Arrington, no doubt, the president added: "If I can move 10,000 troops in a day, you certainly can fix the shower."