Hot Water Heater Meltdown/Piedras Street Hot water is an essential

    For two days, hot water has not been working. The landlord has been attentive, sent someone by who thought it might be something it wasn’t, then sends his maintenance man to troubleshoot. Hugo comes prepared with a tape measure, apartment keys, an electrical voltage tester, screwdrivers, and instructions that if he can’t get it fixed it will require an electrician or plumber and no hot water for several more days. Hugo, a short man, stands on a chair and tests power to the electrical box into which the electric hot water heater is plugged. It is getting juice to the box, but no juice through the switch to the hot water heater. He shows me the switch after he pulls it out of the electrical box. “No bueno,” he says. “Puede repairo?” I ask. Hugo says he will be back in 15 minutes, takes the dead switch and leaves to a neighborhood ferreteria, comes back in thirty minutes and completes his job. A green light comes on at the bottom of the hot water heater when he is done and indicates all systems are functioning properly. I check the hot water fifteen minutes after he leaves to make sure I have hot water, and I do. In this world, it is Hugo’s who keep wheels turning. Cold showers, any time of the day, aren’t hot.