It all started when our street crumbled, and commuters awoke to a five-foot-square crater smack in the middle of traffic. At first I was gleeful, because drivers around here are a cranky band of mad-honking speedgoblins, so the idea of a few careening their way into a scraped undercarriage or cracked axle struck me as just desserts. (During the first week, in fact, I liked to lounge at the outdoor café across the street with my morning coffee and toast the hellions as they bit the road.)
Then the DOT came and dumped in a load of blacktop, which the road quickly swallowed. But the road was voracious, the crevasse reopened, and more headlong ninnies nicked their bumpers. So the DOT tried again, this time at 12.45am with a crew of jackhammerers that disrupted every household for blocks. And the street was angered, so it re-re-cracked, finally summoning the fleet of sewer workers who walked through muck up to their armpits for two weeks.
And we thought the road was appeased. And the road said, Au contraire, mon frère.
Another pocket has collapsed about 200 yards up the street, and the muckwalkers are back. One of them told us they’ll be here until Thanksgiving, repairing another portion of our sewer, which is three feet wide by four feet tall, made entirely of brick, and over 100 years old. Since they’ve been here, the noise and stench have been steady, and our cable has mysteriously cut out a half-dozen times or so. (But the road is also lined with several earth movers that Robert gleefully identifies every time we leave the building. One man’s Nuisance is a toddler’s Nirvana.) So if you don’t see a post for a while, it’s probably because the friggin’ broadband has— [System error]
