Night Moves by Public Works

Swarthmore Public Works crew (l to r) Cuzzy Rowles, Brian Tipping, Ryan Benson, and Rob Walters, with sewer-cleaning rig. Photo: Elise O’Rourke

I took out our dog, Leo, at 11 p.m. tonight for our usual good night walk: down Rutgers Avenue, left onto Harvard, and then down to Cornell.  At the intersection of Cornell and Harvard, I found Swarthmore Public Works employee Rob Walters and foreman Cuzzy Rowles. In baggy sports shorts, their short-sleeved shirts covered with yellow safety vests, they were banging with a sledgehammer to open a manhole sealed over when the street was last paved. 

The sewer line was clogged, and they had gotten a call to fix it. 

After great effort, they hauled the heavy manhole cover off. The smell wafted down the street. 

The two men positioned a borough rig with a pressure clean-out hose over the hole. The truck’s yellow caution lights flashed as they fitted a 5-foot section of black corrugated plastic drainage pipe over the nozzle end of the red pressure hose, rigged with a control rope. Bent 90 degrees at the waist over the manhole, they fished the rig into the hole, pulling on the rope. Laboriously and skillfully, they threaded the hose like a needle into the sanitary (nothing sanitary about it) sewer line, at a right angle five feet underground. Back and forth, again and again, Cuzzy trying to get the nozzle up into the blocked line, using a long, yellow utility pole to coax the nozzle into the blocked pipe. It was like watching fishermen who know their craft. 

Finally, they got the nozzle threaded into the line. Then Rob guided the red plastic pressure hose with his bare hands, while Cuzzy worked the pressure switch on and off. Spray and mist billowed up from the hole with each burst of pressure. After 10 minutes, they finally got the nozzle to move easy up the line towards Chester Road. The hose fed off the reel as the nozzle forced its way up the line. After a while, they reversed the hose, threading it, glistening, back on the storage reel.  

Cuzzy and Rob poked into the manhole with the pole, trying to pull something out. I thought, “Dang, what kind of ugly smelly piece of sewage will they pull out? I’m not sure I want to see it.” They were not fazed — all in a night’s work. (Meanwhile Leo was sitting calmly watching at the end of his leash.)  

Then the men flipped something the size of a small football up and out of the hole onto the street. 

“Yep, it’s a grease plug,” Rob said. “Probably from cooking in the apartment building.” 

They kicked it to the curb. The show was over.  

What a back-breaking job. And done in the dark of night, with no one noticing, except passersby like Leo and me. (Leo appreciated the extra-long walk and the action). We are really lucky here in Swarthmore to have people like Cuzzy and Rob and the entire Public Works crew.

Thanks, Cuzzy and Rob.