Pass Me the Crack(ed) Pipe

Not my pipe.

Here's a question: how horrified would you be if you found out the pipe that takes sewage away from your home was cracked—massively cracked, tens of thousands of dollars to repair cracked—and every time you flushed the toilet all your stuff wasn't traveling down the sewer main with everyone else's stuff to be chemically treated within a millimeter of its life but instead flowing directly into the ground in all its raw glory?

Just curious.

After a revolting-but-could-have-been-oh-so-much-worse basement-coating sewage backup a few days before Christmas, we discovered that the sewer pipe leading away from our house has a branch the diameter of a thick, meaty adult male arm growing inside it which has cracked the pipe to pieces. It has probably been that way for some time. Certainly as long as I've lived in the house and flushed its toilets.

But if you live next door to me (or across the street on the downward slope (Hi, S & C!) never fear. The guys came and saw and fixed this week, so everything is back where it belongs. Or at least is on its way there.

It turns out we pretty much entirely take sewage removal for granted nowadays. When was the last time you sent any kind of send-up—no matter how perfunctory or brief—to anyone who has anything to do with getting rid of all your shit?

Thank you pipe snaking guys, thank you sewage cleanup guys, thank you other pipe snaking guys, thank you second team of cleanup guys, thank you guys using backhoes on our yard this week and fixing our pipes. Thank you from the depth of our souls (and, yes, our bowels). Thank you.


photo courtesy click, morgueFile