This week, we had to contend with a crack in our sewer line. A neighboring tree decided it was more important for it to get water from our sewage than for us to use our toilets and drains. So we spent a couple days getting a rather expensive repair done (and driving to the closest public restroom) as the plumbing crew relined our sewer pipes to seal the break and prevent future ones. As we wait for the city to inspect the repair, the plumbers used a section of the pipe they removed to tape off the area.

And what has been conveying waste from the house to the city sewer? A humble terra cotta tube that had been quietly doing its job several feet/meters underground for over 50 years. Something you don’t think about until it stops working. And when a sewer line fails catastrophically, it could cause major damage to a house that costs a magnitude more than even our expensive repair.

It reminds me of a story we read to our children and granddaughter when they were young, “Yertle the Turtle” by Dr. Seuss. Yertle, the king of the turtles, was dissatisfied with his humble stone throne. He ordered his turtle subjects to stack on top of each other so he could see further and therefore expand his kingdom. He kept ordering turtles to add on to the stack so he could get higher and higher, but the turtles below him ached, starved, and cracked their shells under the pressure. Finally, the one on the bottom burped. (Digestive processes got the best of them too.) The tower collapsed. Yertle was literally overthrown, and the turtles were free.

In human society, we also tend to focus only on the ones on top of the pile: the billionaires, the politicians, the sports stars, and the celebrities. We forget about those who actually make society run, including retail workers, farmers, laborers, and yes, plumbers. During the pandemic, we called them “essential workers.” They had to show up to work every day, often unable to get proper protective equipment, dealing with abuse from customers who couldn’t tolerate any inconvenience (such as wearing masks themselves), and all while being horribly underpaid to keep society fed and operating.

Today, these workers are expected to use the earnings from one of their jobs to pay for gas to drive to their other two. We watch corporations slash benefits and payrolls to plump up stock prices for executive buybacks. Our government is being pillaged to gratify the already rich and powerful. All we can look forward to is November’s midterms and hope that $1.776 billion the president swiped won’t be used to violently sabotage the election.

But like sewer lines cracking and turtles burping, one little thing can bring the whole system down.

Society works when we take care of the people who take care of us. When a factory worker makes enough to buy a home, go on vacations, send kids to college, and save for a comfortable retirement. When teachers don’t have reach into their already lean wallets to buy school supplies, teaching materials, and lunches for their students. And for all those creepy eugenicists worried about “declining birth rates,” families would choose to have children if they had paid parental leave, free childcare, free quality healthcare (based on science and not Facebook posts), and safe public schools. 

A humble clay sewer line gives all of us an important lesson of where we should place our priorities. We must support and invest in the working class people who build our society. Without them, we will all pay a much steeper price when those systems fail—and even the rich and powerful won’t be safe.

Related topics:

My Eat Like a Writer Interview “So why don’t you run for city council?” Made in the USA What do you contribute to society?

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