After we moved into our Warwick Road house here in Magnolia in 1981, a strange thing began to occur: For years, always in the month of May, always late in the afternoon after my wife Rise` got home from work, I would get a call from her at my law office in Medford that our sewer line was clogged. "And," she would add, "Somebody stole the iron cap from the curb clean-out pipe again." I'd call the plumber, who'd snake our line from either the front lawn clean-out behind our Warwick Road property line (which is actually just inside the fence) or from the curbside clean-out right next to Warwick Road, and sell us a new iron cap.
We always called the same plumber. Again and again he blamed the problem on roots growing through the seals between the old clay pipe sections comprising our sewer lateral under the ground. "Once the joints between those old clay sewer lateral pipes sections break down and tree roots find the joints, every year they grow again into the pipes looking for nutrition in your sewage."
Reasonable enough. That explained why the problem was always occurring in May. But why was the problem always occurring late in the afternoon on a day in May?
Then the problem mutated. The plumber began delivering heavy plastic clean-out pipe tops to us when he would come out in may to unclog our lateral. "It's getting harder to find the cast-iron jobs," he claimed. Every year after that, it seemed, someone would break-up the plastic cap topping-off the clean-out pipe, and shove pieces of it down the clean-out pipe into the lateral -- as usual, always late in the afternoon.
"This is odd," the plumber would say when he finally managed to snake-out pieces of plastic "I think somebody has it in for you."
Finally, in the early 1990s, we paid to dig up our lateral and replace it with new, long, well-sealed sections of pipe, with new on the lawn and at the curb. Problems over, right?
Wrong.
Once again, the mysterious mad sewer lateral clean-out pipe terrorist began to strike again, every May, always late in the afternoon, breaking-up the clean-up pipe cap and shoving pieces of it down the pipe into the lateral about 8 feet below.
I thought, "Oh, come on! This is silly! Who's got the time to attack a sewer lateral?!"
And then, finally, after about 15 years, I caught the "terrorist" in the act.
I live on Warwick Road, across the street from the driveway that leads down to Babe Ruth Little League ball field. On business days, rush hour traffic begins to fill Warwick Road at about 3:00 p.m. Tired, impatient people anxious to get home to their families fill the road.
Every Spring, after the start of baseball season, the Little League begins to practice down at Babe Ruth ball field during rush hour. Coaches, players and parents coming down Warwick Road in their cars on our side of the street during rush hour, to make a left down the ball field driveway, would stop traffic on Warwick Road behind them, while they waited for on-coming traffic to clear.
Tempers flared in the rush hour traffic behind them. Again and again, someone in one of those cars "lost it" and drove-up onto the island of grass where the curbside clean-out is located, and roll-over the top, snapping it and flinging it away, or shoving pieces down the clean-out pipe, and as more and more drivers by-passed cars waiting to make the turn into the ball field, dirt began to be plowed by the tires into the clean-out pipe, too.
The offending crazies would stop damaging the clear-out pipe with their cars after May, I think because every year they discovered after a few weeks that you can do an end-run around the daily tie-up on our section of Warwick Road by making a right down one of the streets before that intersection.
I thought, "What can I do?" As I played around with ideas -- a raised-bed garden there with at least two tiers of railroad ties, to deter angry drivers from using the lawn as a highway; or saw-horses with blinking lights every Spring to scare drivers off the lawn -- a big truck pulling around someone making a left into the ball field snapped the plastic clean-out pipe itself, about a foot below the surface.
I managed to repair that one, myself. But cars and trucks kept crushing the clean-out top, every May, year after year.
One day, while watching Tom Hanks' unit blow-up machine-gun nests and bunkers on Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan, I thought of the solution -- put a reinforced concrete "bunker" around the top of the pipe, to protect it!
I called a contractor, who poured a huge donut of reinforced concrete around and slightly higher than the top of the curb-side clean-out pipe, to protect it. He made fun of my idea as he was working on the collar, until a car whipping-around Babe Ruth ball field traffic jumped the curb and drove up onto the lawn, forcing him to dive for safety. "Whoa!" he shouted to me, "You're right! These rush-hour drivers are crazy! You really do need a reinforced concrete collar here!"
We placed a pile of cinder blocks on the lawn blocking cars from rolling-over the collar until it hardened.
And that's how we dealt with the mysterious Mad Sewer Lateral Clean-Out Pipe Terrorist of Magnolia!
