Last week I apologized for writing an alarmist column in which I said I thought people might be living in a pothole in my alley. Further exploration revealed that the pothole was actually the entrance to a giant sinkhole, but probably nobody was living in it. So I said I had been alarmist about the people part.
Guess what. I wasn’t alarmist half enough. Personally, I am now twice as alarmed about the pothole as I was last week.
After a week of working on it with gigantic machinery, the city has turned the pothole/sinkhole into a small pond of undetermined subterranean dimensions that was bubbling explosive gas last I looked at it late yesterday. And I mean it was kind of boiling, like “double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble” in MacBeth.
Jeez.
At one point yesterday neighbors were warned “not to turn anything on or turn anything off,” and later when my wife tried to take a shower she discovered the water had been shut off in the alley.
When she called 311, the city blamed the whole thing on the gas company. The 311 guy told my wife the city had just learned that the gas company had shut off the water to the block. Oh, that darned gas company!
But I would guess the gas company had to shut off the water so they could drain the subterranean lake so they could fix the gas leak the city caused trying to fix the sinkhole. The city guy didn’t mention that part.
Yeah, sure, we’re just feeling reassured as hell here on Bryan Parkway. We’ve only been trying to get this alley fixed for 30 years. Go ahead, blame it on the gas company, why don’t you?
Hey, Reader. I want you to keep a link to this column somewhere so you can send it to the police if the city says an entire block of “known complainers” on Bryan Parkway committed suicide last night by blowing themselves into a sinkhole on purpose.
I make little videos about stuff like this for Vimeo and YouTube, and I offer sometimes to share them with my editors here, but they usually decline on the basis that my videos are what they call “crappy.” But on this occasion, I think they should relent and at least let me include links so you can see them.
Here are three ditties that illustrate what’s been going on and how we are trying to deal with it. The one with the fishing is supposed to be funny. But remember, keep all of this for evidence if my whole block suddenly disappears into the bowels of the planet.
(Oh, almost forgot: the hospital wristbands, if you noticed. Truth: I had just been released from Baylor Hospital about an hour before this interview, after a two-hour totally knocked-out non-life-threatening operation for being old. I was back at home, in bed, and I had just told my wife that, much as I hated it and found it humiliating and un-man-like, I was dealing with so much pain and grogginess that she probably was going to have to wait on me hand and foot for the foreseeable future. Then she told me J.D. Miles was out front and wanted to put me on TV.)
Joke piece about fishing in pothole:
The Bryan Parkway Pothole from JimS on Vimeo.
First day of repairs:Something Happened from JimS on Vimeo.
Second day of repairs:pothole 2nd day repair from JimS on Vimeo.
