Plumbers

Can John McCain catch a break? In a bid to sway voters who have doubted his ability to shepherd the economy, McCain plucked Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher out of obscurity during the final presidential debate Wednesday and assured him of an asterisk in the history of the 2008 presidential campaign. "Joe the Plumber," said McCain, was just the kind of guy Barack Obama's tax plans would hurt and just the kind of guy his plan would help. Turns out that is not the case.

The line cooks had matching stickers pasted to their chef's jackets one Saturday night in mid-October, brave words for a bleak reality: "We are the future of Konocti." Sad-eyed housekeepers clutched instructions on how to apply for unemployment benefits and compared notes in soft Spanish about job prospects here in hard-knock Lake County: "Muy dificil." But leave it to the country music singer to get to the painful heart of the matter during what he called the possible "last concert ever" at Konocti Harbor Resort and Spa -- tony Northern California's rare blue-collar playground, which is set to close Tuesday.

Henry and Marjorie Lipson were anything but jolly on Christmas morning. They had 16 relatives and friends coming over for a 5 p.m. holiday party at their Sherman Oaks home, a 25-pound turkey waiting to be cooked -- and a clogged kitchen sink. "I don't know how much longer I can wait," said Marjorie Lipson, frustrated that she couldn't start preparing the feast. "Talk about nervous!"

Any other plumber would call it a pipe dream. Not Dennis Crabb. His campaign to design an inexpensive homeless shelter out of common plumbing pipe is an obsession that has left him homeless. The Topanga Canyon plumber has spent more than two years cutting and bending plastic pipes in the hopes of creating a lightweight dome that can be used by homeless people. The last six months of that has been spent in an isolated part of Topanga State Park.