Remember last winter, when me and Wanda got flooded so badly? We were saved by a few coins from, we figured, Ol’ D.B. Cooper.

Well, that was the good news. The tale is finally over and here’s how it ended.

After the flood we cleaned up what we could — heck, we aren’t professional cleaners or anything. Don’t get me wrong — I do know the difference between a dirt clod and a mouse turd.

On one of those warm spring nights, Wanda and I strolled down to Smokey Joe’s for a cool one. While we were there, one of our casual acquaintances stopped by and the talk turned to our flood problems and how we’d get the house back in order.

I alluded that the insurance company guy was coming by next week, and was told in no uncertain terms to follow him around and see what he was jotting down. Well, he did, and I did. His conclusion was that to protect from future floods we needed to raise the house two feet or so. Rebuild this, refinish that, and in all, it came to a tidy sum. I was rubbing my hands in glee. Wanda poked me in the ribs and whispered, “Stop that!”

So a day or so later my bar buddy stopped by the house and asked how it was going. We chatted some, until he asked me if I had a contractor yet.

“Nope,” I said. “Got a recommendation?” He told me he did for sure, and wrote down the name and number of this guy he knows who has done some good things around town.

The next day I called him up. He had a Scandinavian name, I guess.

“Mr. Hourse Pooeet?” I asked. “Did I say that right?”

“Yes, its Scandehooven” he said.

Well, to me, he sounded like an all-right guy. We commenced to palaver. I told him my problem and the stuff we needed done, he agreed to do it under his construction company, “Nancy’s Jobs.” To make it easy on us, he said to just sign the insurance checks over to him.

Here’s where it got interesting. Mr. Pooeet got maybe 80 percent of the job done, then for all intents and purposes disappeared. He never returned a phone call, and I couldn’t even find the guy or company. I mean, he went underground or something.

About a week after that, we had a good wind, and one quarter of our new roof sailed down the block. A couple of weeks later, the left corner of the newly elevated house assumed its original elevation. The shock caused the chimney to break in half and fall through the recently ventilated roof. As the house twisted, the new siding from the back half just popped off like popcorn popping off hot asphalt.

We were really lucky, though. We had that hidden stash to rebuild our poor twisted home with. Not everyone has that extra stash, especially in these times.

Then I did the homework I should have done in the first place.

This state has some contractor laws that are next to unbelievable. If you have a general contractor’s license and you screw up and lose it, why, by golly, you can just go down to Olympia and get a new license under a new name. The good news is you can check past records, which is what I should have done. Mr. Pooeet had several past licenses, all revoked only to be replaced. Heck, he had six different companies and all had serious enough complaints to cost him six licenses.

I didn’t ever think anyone in our Valley was low enough to prey on folks just trying to put it together. But guess what? They are here and among us — so be careful.

• Bob Edwards lives in North Bend and is a member of the Sno Valley Writes! group. E-mail him at bobledwards@comcast.net.