Storm Drain

Daft morning, the Roto Rooter guys were on time, early, to clean the clean-out on the interior roof drain, which comes down inside the building and elbows out into the alley about three feet below grade. There is a clean-out, cast iron, frozen in place, they eventually have to break the cap. Fine. They pull out a bunch of scale and small animal parts, come and get me, send me up the ladder with a flashlight, there's what they call and off-set and I'd call a break about three feet in, not good. They give an estimate of $1500, to dig up the pavement and make the repair. I'm off to the City Offices to talk to the town Engineer, Larry, who passes me along to the Sewer guy, Rusty, and we pop every manhole cover within the block, both ends of the alley. I'd not seen the underworld of Portsmouth before, bricked and nasty. There is no storm drain in the alley, but we have a roof drain that clearly goes out and connects with a storm drain, but it's not there. If Roto-Rooter had effected the repair, it wouldn't have made any difference, there's no place for the water to go. No wonder the basement floods. Records were lost in the '37 flood, whatever. You can almost reconstruct events if you look at the paving. Lovely brick pavers under two inches of asphalt, and down the middle is a strip of concrete maybe three feet wide, depth unknown. Having popped the manhole covers, we know that two of them, one at either end of the alley, and the concrete strip, are electrical, massive three-phase trunk lines. They destroyed the storm drain when they put in the underground electric. Progress. My proposed solution is to drill a hole in the side of the building, through double walled brick (there's a company that does this, there's a company that does anything), refit the drain with a 'tee' higher up, and daylight the water out onto the surface of the alley. This is what later buildings did, and it makes the most sense to me. Now the water hits a plug and pushes back against the basement wall outside the museum and percolates through. Not good at all. All I want to do, Drainage 101, is get the water downhill, I don't care if it blocks traffic, I don't care if a Barbie Doll drowns. Drainage, in these flood plains, is serious business. Glenn and I had talked about another movie, The Emily Project, and he sent some dialogue today that cracked me up. Talk about outside the box. A working title might be "Called Back", because we've always enjoyed that concept, of being called, again. The image of Tim Hardin smashing his guitar is priceless. I've known a lot of people, in a lot of different places, and that rift you do there, give me the camera, I can shoot as well as the next guy. We could well conspire together. Emily would need her room, and the view, out that dormer window. We'd have to build this, I see it in my mind's eye, and she needs to be perfectly comfortable there, understanding every nuance. There's a picture of Faulkner, it's iconic, he's stroking a horse's muzzle, there are holes in his pants. Does make you wonder about the relative value? He'd already won the Noble Prize.

Tom

I have to wander off soon, to the spaces between,
the unknown connection, that ties us together,
what they call static electricity,
and I call I shot in the arm.