I'm crazy about The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, don't get me wrong. But, well ... she sheds like a collie in August. Mrs. T has long, beautiful, wavy, Julia-Roberts-in-"Pretty-Woman" hair. It looks great, I think. However, it clogs the drain in the shower faster than I can clean it out.

I'll admit I also contribute to the problem. I don't want to offend any readers with particularly delicate sensibilities, but ... how to put this? ... Have you ever seen that famous, though blurry footage of Bigfoot trundling through the woods? That's me. I have more body hair than Robin Williams bathing in Rogaine. I'm like some sort of mythical woodland creature from a Tolkien story. One from a cold climate.

At any rate, that drain runs slow four days out of five and until recently, no amount of plunging, drain cleaning or supplications to the gods of plumbing could do a thing to alter that fact.

So a while back, I presented this problem to my father-in-law, who makes his living as a plumber. (Having a plumber in the family is, by the way, the Best Thing in the World.)

My father-in-law has seen me in action with a chain saw and various other power tools, so his first recommendation was, "Try some Liquid Plunger*." He figured I couldn't do too much damage with an over-the-counter drain cleaner.

Following his advice, I purchased the Liquid Plunger and - blatantly disregarding the directions on the bottle - poured fully 100-percent of its contents into the shower basin. Where it sat like an inert, gelatinous blob for 30 minutes before slooooooooowly descending into the drain. I went back to the store, purchased a second bottle of Liquid Plunger, and repeated the procedure. This time, the gelatinous blob went down the drain after only 20 minutes.

Liquid Plunger, I discovered, is no match for Mrs. T's silken tresses.

Figuring the old ways are perhaps best, I climbed into the shower with plunger (not the liquid kind) in hand. I plunged. And plunged. And plunged. And plunged. After about a half-hour of this, the drain was running only slightly slower than it had before I started.

Sweat poured from my brow and dripped into the shower, where it collected at the drain, joining the rest of the standing water there.

As I always do when I have a home repair problem I can't handle myself, I called my father-in-law again.

"Liquid Plunger didn't work?" he said.

"Liquid Plunger didn't work," I affirmed.

"Hmm..." he said.

I waited.

"Did you try plunging it with a plunger?" he said.

"I did," I said.

"Hmm..." he said.

I waited.

Finally, with obvious reluctance and in hushed, reverential tones, my father-in-law told me The Secret. There is, he said, a substance known to only a few, which will clear any drain, and fast. It is to Liquid Plunger what the A-Bomb is to a peashooter, he said.

Like a drug dealer sharing the secret of an especially potent batch of crystal meth, he told me where I could buy this magical drain elixir, told me its name.

I went to the small, out-of-the-way hardware store as instructed, gave the manager there the secret plumber's handshake, and whispered the password, "Big John sent me. The crow flies at midnight."

Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, the store manager signaled me to follow him into a back room. There, from a lead-lined case, he removed a two-quart, white bottle. The bottle sported no cutesy pictures of scrubbing bubbles or a slogan claiming it was the "fastest-acting." It was covered instead with red, block letters warning against everything from accidental poisoning to possible radioactivity-related side effects.

The manager placed the bottle in a heavy, plastic bag and handed it to me.

"Wear gloves," he said.

Back home, wearing heavy gloves, safety goggles and a painter's facemask (really!), I removed the bottle's lid and - following the directions very carefully - dispensed a small amount of the contents into the hopelessly clogged drain. It immediately began bubbling furiously. In 30 seconds, the drain was clear and running freely.

Hours later, somewhere in Lake Michigan, thousands of fish undoubtedly met with an untimely end. But my drain was clear.

Though the bottle was still mostly full, I went back to the hardware store and purchased two more. Anything that works this good is sure to be banned any day by the FDA, EPA, DNR or FBI. When that happens, I'll be the guy standing in the shadows outside your neighborhood hardware store, saying, "Psst. Hey, bud. I hear ya got a clogged drain..."

* The product's name has been changed to protect me from lawsuits.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or to obtain the name of the drain cleaner mentioned in this column (after verifying you are not a representative of the EPA), e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.