Daniel Rubin: A word from a real Joe the Plumber

If you happened to catch a baseball game Wednesday night instead of the presidential debate, you may have missed the making of a new American hero:

Joe the Plumber.

The two candidates name-checked Joe Wurzelbacher, a Northwest Ohio tradesman, so many times that you almost felt bad for Scranton. He's now the touchstone of blue-collar goodness.

Except for the fact that he doesn't have a plumber's license, and his real name is Samuel. That's show business.

This made me want to track down my own Joe the Plumber - Joseph P. Farley of Cheltenham Village.

Though he doesn't talk presidential politics much at home, Farley's got some experience in the field. He, his wife, Pat, and their children were the subjects of an 1984 Inquirer series that portrayed how everyday concerns shape a typical American family's presidential decision.

That year Joe and his wife wound up pulling for Ronald Reagan over Walter Mondale. They'd been lifelong Democrats.

I left messages for Farley all day Thursday. I thought maybe he was being cagey, hoping his 15 minutes were up.

Turns out he'd spent the day in a second-floor bathroom in Mayfair, tackling a leak that was ruining a widower's walls.

"The real Joe the Plumber has to work for a living," he said and laughed when he called me back. "I didn't watch the debate. I was watching the Phillies. But I did catch clips of it as I was going back and forth to my truck today. McCain kept going on about Joe the Plumber, and I had no idea what he was talking about."

His wife told him when he got home that the other Joe got famous after telling Sen. Barack Obama in Toledo that he was planning to buy a plumbing business that earns more than $250,00 a year. He worried that his taxes would rise.

I asked my Joe if he'd decided whom he was voting for.

"I'll tell you," he said. "I don't know how it's going to sound. We're Irish Catholics here. And I like McCain's stand on abortion. I like McCain's guts. I relate to him because I walk around like a feeble old man myself.

"I'm always screwing up Obama's last name. The other day I called him O'Biden. He's obviously the best orator and the smoothest talker and all that business. But I don't see that he has enough experience."

He said he didn't love being a single-issue voter, but he couldn't get past the idea that abortions would be easier to get under Obama.

The Farleys have a 4-year-old granddaughter, Geraldine Gonzales, who was born with Down syndrome. "She's just wonderful," he said. "She's beautiful. She had leukemia. Now's she's talking somewhat. How many Down's kids are aborted?"

Pat, too, wrestles with the abortion issue but likes Obama more. She says she's still deciding.

Joe Farley's 65, about to turn 66 after the November election. On Thursday, as he was running between the upstairs bathroom and his truck, he kept noticing the widower wringing his hands before the TV as the stock market zig-zagged.

"Sometimes it's better to hide your head in the sand," Farley said. "There's nothing I can do about the financial crisis, anyway."

Except to work forever.

That's what he figures he'll be doing. Joe and me both. He used to talk to Pat of retiring, going to some kind of school for chess.

There's no way now.

"I've got to tell you," he said, "if one or the other gets in, I don't know how how much it's going to affect me, anyway. We're in such a mess."

Then he said he had to go. It was time for Joe the Plumber to take his evening constitutional, a three-mile walk in the Pennypack woods to work off all the stress.