Is Working Unclothed in Crawl Spaces a National Security Threat?
Sociologists, government officials, sex therapists and even talk radio hosts are baffled by a new national phenomenon: carpenters who strip off their clothes before slithering into the crawl space under a home to make repairs.
“Frankly, I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve seldom seen naked behavior so puzzling,” said Robert Hagenthorpe, the sociologist and nudity specialist who wrote the 2003 book “Strippers, Streakers and Stargazers: A Study in Deliberate Undress.”
Hagenthorpe, recently named to a hastily convened study group created by the Department of Homeland Security, ticks off a sampling of cases the group is examining:
– A Denver woman came home from work and found the carpenter she had left building bookcases in the living room stuck the in the crawl space under the house wearing no clothes. Firemen and paramedics had to be called to free him.
– In San Francisco, a homeowner came into the kitchen and found her carpenter in a torrent of power tool noise and wood chips routing a door completely naked, except for his tool belt and a baseball cap. She summoned building inspectors who cited the man for failure to observe due care with power tools.
– A Memphis carpenter, a woman, stripped down before entering a crawl space to repair rotting joists. She emerged moments later, covered by ants and ran about frantically swatting them until she stumbled over a wading pool and fell into a hedge.
A spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that a panel of experts has been convened to study the naked carpenter cases, but declined to speculate whether they might be linked to terrorism.
“We’re interested in all aberrant behavior in a general way,” said the spokesperson, who declined to be identified.
A Cleveland talk radio host, George Worthington, who has been highly critical of local officials for not taking stronger action against the dozen or so nude carpenter cases in northern Ohio, claims that most of the carpenters were playing Puccini operas on their boom boxes when they took off their clothes.
The Homeland Security spokesperson declined to discuss a possible linke between Puccini and carpenter nudity, but confirmed that in every case, the nude carpenters had been playing loud music before they stripped down.
Hagenthorpe, who is a professor at North Central Cincinnati University, said a possible link between nude carpenters and Puccini was “intriguing, to say the least.” He said preliminary data indicates many of carpenters were playing well known Puccini arias, rather than entire operas, when they disrobed.
“I think that’s why you have Homeland Security so interested,” he said. “Aberrant behavior among a group of people who are odd to begin with and who possess dangerous tools, triggered by music in a foreign language. I suspect the feeling is, ‘You can’t be too careful with people like that.’”