Don't look now, we don't know how to fix the sewage pump
Pump Six and the rare people who know how to learn
A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels — Proverbs 1:5
Just what makes a woman or man indispensable? George Washington was an indispensable man. We can say we owe our existence to his prudent service. But we can also say that his service was preordained; Washington could not help but serve, he had no choice. The man was gifted with a mind that could teach itself.
Is that what defines the indispensable: those who care so much for their world that would give anything, do anything or learn anything needed? Their attitude is. “If I don’t learn do this thing, we will be wallowing in shit.” That “thing” may be something they do not know, or ever learned, or were not born to. Washington had never before commanded such a large and ill-disciplined force as the Continental Army. Lincoln was not trained to deal with what he had to do. But they taught themselves.
My neighborhood Nextdoor and Facebook posts are freckled daily with requests from homeowners, mostly men:
Can someone show me how to jump start my car? My battery died.
I need to change a flat tire. HELP please!
Where is the water heater in my house?
How do I shut off the water to my house?
Can someone hang my ceiling fan? Can someone mow my lawn? Can someone come over and rake my leaves? My sink is clogged…HELP!
These tasks ought to have been mastered long ago. There was a time when young men and women would have finished such things with hardly a thought. How is it that I can do things men not much younger than me can not or refuse to do? How was it that families in the ‘80s with five children and two working parents still put dinner on the table, fixed their cars, mowed their lawns and repaired their own houses?
In my semi-affluent neighborhood, very few people mow their own lawn or even plant anything in the flower beds. As a result, the lawns are a weedy, chlorotic yellow mess and the flower beds still have the same evergreen, contractor grade plants that came with the house . They are sullen, skeletal things, barely alive in their compacted clay soil. Affluent the neighborhood is, Affluent-LOOKING it is not.
I rarely see anyone wash their own car. In fact, I never see teenage kids washing cars. When my kids did chores outside they were often stared at by passers-by. One parent a few houses away once asked me, “How do you get them to do all that? My kids wouldn’t do that.” Once, while collecting trash around a nearby park and pond, my boys were approached by an adult who told them not to bother because the HOA is supposed to do that. The HOA does, once a year, whether it needs it or not.
No one around us hangs their own Christmas lights. Contractors do it all now. Of course the lights are all the same: red and yellow. Like Ronald McDonald is coming to town. This year was the record: 11 houses all the same except ours. We still hang our 1970’s multi-colored incandescent bulbs on the only eaves we can reach.
My neighbors do not want to be bothered with such things. I understand. They are intelligent people with busy lives. However, when crisis comes, as it does often in Houston, the plumbers, landscapers, electricians and handy-men will once again hold fast to egregious ransom.
My examples do not sharpen the poking stick as well as a story by the incomparable science fiction writer Paolo Bacigalupi in his story, Pump Six.
Pump six is a huge sewage pump and it is failing. Failing after 100 years of faithful and flawless service. If it fails, the people in New York will be swimming in their own filth. The protagonist, Alvarez, understands this, his co-workers do not.
Alvarez lives in a world suffering from pollution, filth, neglect and a population of degenerate humans called “trogs.” The trogs live and die on the streets where they have sex in groups, scavenge and remain passive their daily degeneration. But the real problem in this world is that no one cares to learn.
The story begins with Alvarez’s wife nearly killing herself in one of the dumbest ways possible. Alvarez’s days are full of this kind of stupidity. We learn that New York is horribly polluted and that one must take special care to stay healthy, if that is possible at all. He arrives late to work one day and is told Pump Six “is broken.”
His dolt of a colleague, Chee, tells him Pump Six stopped working at 10:00pm the night before. He didn’t follow trouble-shooting procedure, forgot to switch the sewage flow over to other pumps and didn’t think to call Alvarez for help. Chee did nothing. What’s worse is he didn’t think to do anything. He was just counting on Alvarez coming to work.
Alvarez is faced with other challenges, like dealing with his useless boss, helping his friend fix the drink dispenser at his bar, vacuous sexual promiscuity and getting his wife pregnant, hoping she does not give birth to a trog.
But Alvarez was lucky to have a mentor, long passed, who taught him to learn, to figure things out, to seek. To fix Pump Six, Alvarez must become an autodidact, and fast. The story ends with his becoming one, probably just in time. He does it because no one else will. His visit to a university library will remind you of our current campus degradations.
Teach yourself that word: autodidact.
Other than faith in Christ, loyalty to family and friends, knowing how to know is man’s greatest calling. That skill demands humility and deference to a past we have long condescended. With God’s grace and the sufficient discomfort, perhaps new George Washingtons, Lincolns and Alvarezes will emerge.
Listen to CCR on this subject:
We all seem to be Ivy Leaguers now.
Wasn’t going to comment, but I will.
With age came an unwillingness to tear down a carburetor, pull a starter, even to open a plugged drainpipe by disassembly. Who stepped up? My son.
I soon found myself relying on him for far too much. He’d never received training, why was he helping people all over the map, replacing rotted floor joists, installing toilets, on and on?
Because he could, and it felt good to do it. There is a learning curve to everything, and he found a way in under every circumstance.
Your situation would seem to be economic. People who never “had to” and thus, do not.
Thankfully I’m back to doing rather than watching.
It’s a matter of choice.