September 02, 2006

In Memoriam: Bob O’Connor

Posted at 9:43 pm by jt3y
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August 30, 2006

Next Time, I Call Reddy Kilowatt

Regular readers of the Almanac may recall the problems I had with the gas company a few weeks ago.

Well, I arrived home shortly after that Almanac appeared to find a letter in my mailbox from the gas company's customer "service" department, which revealed that they would be replacing the gas mains on our street. This would require digging up our front yards and driveways.

Also, vehicles were not going to be allowed to park on the street.

Also, they were going to have to interrupt the gas service. We would have to be home on the day they did that ... but, of course, they couldn't tell us which day that might be.

Oh, and by the way: If they found any leaks on my side of the shut-off valve, I could expect to have my gas turned off until the line was replaced, though they would gladly install a temporary gas connection at a cost of $200 for 72 hours.

Well, who wants a gas main leak in their neighborhood anyway, right? And it couldn't take too long to replace a gas main on my little street in North Bittyburg. What's a little inconvenience for a few days?

A few days --- ha!

Work started the first week of August. As of Tuesday night, there are still piles of dirt, blinking emergency barricades and construction vehicles all over our street.

At one point, they had piled all of the excavated dirt in a big heap on the street in front of my house. A heavy rainstorm two Saturdays ago turned the entire street into a mudslide. The good news is that the people at the bottom of the hill got an excellent load of free topsoil.

This past Friday night, I arrived home at about 11 o'clock to find that the gas had been shut off at 4:30 p.m. when the new line was connected --- and, of course, since I wasn't home, they didn't turn it back on.

You see, the gas company, like most utilities, operates under the quaint notion that each household has a man, a woman, and 2.5 children. The woman stays home all day, baking bread and scrubbing floors (in pearls and heels) while dad goes off to his office and reads files. At night, they gather around the Philco and listen to Fred Allen.

And during the day, naturally, mom is available to let the gas company man into the house.

Either that, or the utilities think that all people have the kinds of jobs that allow us to sit at home all day and wait for utility company employees to drop by. I'm not sure what kinds of jobs those are. (Utility company executive jobs, I suspect.)

Anyway, Friday night I went to bed, because Saturday I had to go out of town. On Sunday I worked for 15 hours. On Monday I had to leave the house at 5 a.m. and got home at about 7 p.m., with just enough energy to fall asleep. This didn't leave me much time to sit around waiting for the gas company to come back.

Remarkably, the hot water tank retained enough heat to allow me to take a warm shower on Sunday and a tepid one on Monday. But Tuesday morning ... ee-yow.

I don't remember the last time I had a cold shower --- it might have been when we used to go to Blue Dell Swimming Pool when I was a kid --- but jeez laweez. Shaving in cold water is no treat, either.

As an indication of how addled I am first thing in the morning, I briefly considered warming up some shaving water on the stove ... the gas stove. Uh, right.

To the great credit of the gas company (or at least its blue-collar employees), they sent someone out Tuesday evening about a half-hour after I called. A few minutes of fiddling with the meter, and a few more inside the house, and we were ... you'll pardon the expression ... "cooking with gas" again.

And, remember my original complaint about the gas meter --- or, more specifically, how it hadn't been read in more than two years? (I called to have it updated to an "automatic reading," but was told that it couldn't be because of a "broken screw.")

Well, I've got one of those swell new electronic meters. My next-door neighbor, who works for North Bittyburg's water authority, tells me that the job of converting old gas meters over to the automatic ones was subcontracted out to a private company. That makes me suspect that the "broken screw" was "broken" by the contractor, who left without telling anyone. (The guys playing in the mud on my street are private contractors, too, not company employees.)

All's well that end's well, I suppose. (Or is it "all's well that's gas well"?)

And I suspect I won't have any problems with the gas company for years to come --- it's one of those utilities that rarely, if ever, goes out. If the cable company, for instance, also supplied natural gas, your stove would occasionally explode for no apparent reason, and your hot water tank would sometimes dispense carbolic acid.

But you'll forgive me if I start stockpiling charcoal and lighter fluid ... just in case.

Posted at 07:15 am by jt3y
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August 29, 2006

That Old Mon Valley Charm

The Almanac has often pointed out that the Mon-Yough area is no need of its own "Mensa" chapter any time soon.

But we've also got a few people who are just as ... shall we say ... gifted with the "social graces" as they are brilliant.

Take our first examples today, a 19-year-old from Elizabeth and an 18-year-old boy from Forward. Apparently bored with conventional teen-age boy pursuits, such as ...

• watching girls,



• thinking about girls,



• and trying to get girls to acknowledge your existence without gagging

... they decided to run amok.

How, you ask? Drinking beer until they got sick? Drag racing down Route 51? Shooting off fireworks? Shooting off fireworks while drinking beer, getting sick, and drag racing down Route 51?

Nah, that's sissy stuff.

According to Forward Township police and Chris Buckley in the Valley Independent, they hijacked a road excavator at a construction site. Police allege that one of the boys then plowed up utility poles and water lines, knocking out power, cable and water service to residents on River Hill Road and Malerie Lane.

Laughing yet? Me neither.

Neither is PennDOT. This little joy ride is going to delay the reopening of River Hill Road by several days, and it also damaged the road excavator, ripping the tracks off of it. I'd expect it's also going to cost the utility companies a couple of thousand dollars at least.

You may be shocked to learn that police allege this dynamic duo was drinking wine "for about an hour" before the damage occurred. What? Alcohol was involved? What a surprise!

And just to get back to my original thesis --- that we're turning out a lot of Nobel Prize candidates in the Mon Valley --- police say they tracked down one of the boys because he drove his mom's SUV to the construction site and left it there when he fled the scene.

Genius like that gives me faith in the bright, shining promise of Pennsylvania's youth.

Meanwhile, over in Jeannette, my old colleague and cow-orker Paul Paterra reported in the Tribune-Review about a sweet, kind, little old lady who called the cops on her 14-year-old next-door neighbor because of the horrible thing he did to her.

He meowed at her.

Twice.

According to Paul's story in the Trib, the lady began complaining to police after the kid's pet cat --- as cats do --- kept getting loose and running through her yard.

The boy's mother finally gave the cat away "to keep the peace in the neighborhood."

Now, if you were 14 years old, and your neighbor made you get rid of your cat, would you be mad?

Darn tootin'.

So, whenever the lady walked past his porch, he meowed at her.

Personally, I'd have done more than meowed at her, so I applaud this kid's restraint. He could teach the brain surgeons in the road excavator incident a thing or two.

Anyway, the lady called the cops, and the cops cited the kid for harassment. His defense attorney says the police are "wasting the court's time," and I tend to agree.

But put yourself in the cop's place: If you had somebody calling the station every 20 minutes, complaining that the neighbor kid is meowing, I suspect you'd issue a citation, too, just to get her off of your back.

The district magistrate hasn't made a decision yet. I think he ought to fine the kid a ball of yarn, and make him pay one saucer of milk to the lady as restitution. I think she'd enjoy it. She's been plenty catty so far.

I hope the judge doesn't send him to juvenile detention, that's all. I can just see him --- like Arlo Guthrie in "Alice's Restaurant" --- sittin' on that Group W bench with all of them mother stabbers and father rapers:

"What you in for, kid?"

"Meowing at old ladies."

On the other hand, he's likely to meet people in the clink who are 10 times nicer than his next-door neighbor, so juvie hall has got that going for it.

Posted at 07:47 am by jt3y
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