I was a 9 year old boy living in a sleepy beach town when I began working with my plumber grandfather on school breaks. He would wake me up at 5 am, and we would get into his old work van. He’d buy me a buttered roll for breakfast when we stopped for fuel at the gas station. Behind the drivers seat of the van, sitting on a crate of malleable gas pipe fittings, I peered ahead through the windshield at a chaotic scene; the Garden State Parkway morning commute north. The world seemed bigger with a new sense of adventure and opportunity, I recall thinking to myself amidst taking in the smell of pipe cutting oil, dog hair, and cigarette smoke.

Once on the job site I began as instructed to clean copper pipe fittings with a folded piece of sand clothe while sitting on the concrete floor. “Hey….” grandpa gestured sternly. “ A plumber can’t work sitting down.” That was the last time I sat under his watch. Call it child labor law breech or what you will, but he was instilling a work ethic in me. We would split a hot pastrami and mustard bagel for lunch and leave the job site at 3:30 pm. He taught me a lot about plumbing and life in general on these days, between drags of his Tareyton cigarette and raising the volume of 10/10 wins AM radio when a topic of interest arose. The most influential of his sayings were as follows:

“A Plumber can’t work sitting down.”

“Know whats right and do it.”

“Work hard and don’t let anybody stop you.”

We have made it part of our culture at Shorely Plumbing And Heating to serve each of our customers with the same spirit of adventure and opportunity that captivated me on those mornings as a young boy working with grandpa. This ethos promotes our ability to provide “Service you can shorely trust.”

-Michael S. Williams

CEO