Called a plumber lately? How quickly was he able to get to your place?

A little story today appeared on the wires about a town in Maine whose last plumber retired, leaving its population — about 20 percent seniors — without the expertise necessary to, well, unplug the necessary.

The town is Jackman, and there are only 862 people there, but still, someone’s got to do the dirty work, and right now, there isn’t anyone. So the town is offering a scholarship for someone who is willing to learn a plumber’s trade and move to Jackman.

We did, however, notice that the same kind of thing is beginning to happen here in our smaller towns, and not just with plumbers. The last plumber we had to call had to come from Freeport. Our regular plumber who had lived in Arrowsic recently retired.

Skilled tradespeople are rare at the best of times, but with Maine’s population increasing, those who had long ago chosen one of the trades — plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, and so on — are either reaching an age when they can’t do these things anymore, or they’ve retired. We aren’t recruiting enough folks to do these things now, and when we do, we want them to be “masters” at what they do.

You don’t really need a master plumber to unplug the toilet or fix a slow drain, and it seems like a real waste of money, because masters earn more than apprentices or journeymen. But it’s hard to find an apprentice or journeyman who is willing to come out and be a handyman when they can go with the master plumber and get paid double.

You don’t need a master electrician to rewire a lamp, or a master carpenter to replace a plyboard in a wall. But if you’re lucky enough to get anyone at all, that’s who comes, either because the apprentices have all grown up and are masters themselves, or because they left the state to go to college and haven’t returned.

When was the last time you saw an apprentice at all, come to think of it?

Jackman has the right idea; they’re willing to pay $2,000 to train their new plumber. Maybe that’s what our local towns should do as well.

Some sorts of trades are never going to go out of style. Yes, electricians are going to have to learn to put in solar panels and wire small wind turbines, and plumbers are going to have to get their heads around composting toilets and low-flow shower heads, and carpenters will need to learn about things like Passivhausquality insulation while they’re replacing the plywood. But in reality, the trades haven’t changed that much in a hundred years.

Maine has an apprenticeship program that would cover 50 percent of tuition costs, but it should be revamped to pay the master to train the apprentice. There is no real need for the average plumber or carpenter to have to do anything but on the job training, at least initially. And there will always, always be a need for them. It is well worth our state labor department funding to pay people who have been doing the job their whole life to teach the next generation.

And all of this has to happen quickly. Tiny towns like Jackman are the tip of the iceberg. Soon, many towns will be without necessary services because of age, retirement, or death of the master tradesmen.

And young people and even not so young people who are casting around for a new direction should consider these jobs.