I hadn't realized it, but I was as dependent on Bob as Anglophiles are on Alistair Cooke and his Victorian garage-sale set. This Old House filled a void in my life which coincided with the space my house occupied. True, it was hard to keep up, since they kept changing houses on you, but I rested easy, knowing my trilevel Victorian saltbox with rustic timber and Doric columns would one day be a very rich archaeological site.

Some guys will have a few beers and watch ball game; I would crack a couple High Lifes and watch Bob make dream houses come true. Bob could make a room expansion look so easy it was impossible to resist getting out the hammer and loosening a little plaster on the unsightly wall separating the living room from the bathroom. It was easy to forget the shows weren't done in real time. It seems as if the guys came in, poured the floor, knocked up the walls, and at least got the roof trussed out in twenty-seven minutes, but, looking closely, you noticed that by the time the homeowner's glasses had gotten a little thicker and his hair a little thinner and that his wife, who had been prying out lath with a crowbar, like a good sport, had disappeared altogether.

No one said home improvement would be easy. Certainly not I, standing there ankle deep in plaster, needing another six-pack after the friendly little clarinet theme had played (too soon, too soon!), wondering how grasshoppers (Insects in Love, on most of these PBS stations) could be mating at a time like this. the crew never arrived, Norm was not in the next room rigging up some cabinets, the wife would be home in an hour to a breezier bathroom than she had left, but still, somehow, I knew Bob would make it better next week. When I heard he wasn't coming back, I was so depressed I hung up my stud finder and called in the professionals.

I had lost the will to home-improve.