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Didgeridoo, Part II (Electric Boogaloo)

Posted Aug 12, 2008 by Geoff Fox

Updated Dec 31, 2008 at 01:44 PM

Turns out you don’t need an actual “PVC pipe cutter” to cut PVC pipe.

In a burst of ingenuity that would make MacGyver snort dismissively, I took a small saw meant for cutting small pieces of wood and divided a roughly 15-foot length of three-quarter-inch PVC pipe into four sections.

That small feat, which took less than four minutes, but included the diligent and prideful help of Thing 2, produced, in Ironhead terms, four didgeridoos.

To recap: a didgeridoo is a simple aboriginal wind instrument, and my wife has wanted one for years. Last summer, Iron and the Monkeys saw a demonstration about didgeridoos by Tampa guy Darren Liebman at the library on Cross Creek Boulevard in New Tampa. On July 30, my formerly beloved colleague Ronnie Blair wrote about a Liebman demonstration at Seven Oaks Elementary School. When Iron read the story, her lust for a didgeridoo all her own was reignited.

So, it’s been a couple weeks since I made four sticks out of the pipe left in our yard by the cable company. That’s a picture of them to the left. Impressive, eh?

If Iron has exhaled through each “didgeridoo” more than once, I haven’t heard it.

And I barely heard it the first time.

“Ripsnorting” Ronnie Blair said the instrument “sounded like an electric hum.”

“You know, like a power line when something’s gone bad.”

The instruments produced in my garage sounded like cartoon flatulence.

Iron was dissatisfied.

I asked what will become of the four sticks of plastic.

“Ummm,” she said.

For once, I momentarily stumped her.

“Do you need to use them for something, or because you want to write it in your blog?”

She’s never stumped for long.

“I guess I’ll eventually clean them up and do something,” she said, “unless you had other plans for them.”

I could fill them with concrete and make weapons out of them, I thought.

Since I didn’t actually speak, she was still plotting. She said she might give away all but one.

“I might do some kind of design on the remaining one with the goal of getting a wider pipe so as to produce the correct sound,” she said. “I think the thing’s just too narrow so the sound is too high.”

I don’t know. The more I think of it, the sound of a dyspeptic Daffy Duck honking through the house could be just the way to rouse everybody during a midnight fire drill.

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