You’ll all be glad to know the sewer was fixed the next day. Sort of.
There was another break farther down the line. The plumber (Bill, of Bill’s Plumbing) heard water coming from the break…through seven feet of earth. I wouldn’t have believed it, but V was there when he said he heard it, and we had Lee (of Lee’s Sewer) come out and scope the drain with a camera. Lee provided us with a VHS copy of the journey, and sure enough there was the goddamn break in the drain.
Watching a videotape of a journey through your main drain is marvelous, in that the primary definition of “marvelous” is “causes great wonder; extraordinary.”
Anyway, Bill hired an old Irish guy to dig the necessary ditch. He looked exactly like our babysitter Chuck. This guy is basically the Hank Aaron of ditchdiggers. He showed up every day, dug the ditch for eight hours, and left. Never blinked. He had to use a little tiny shovel because the ditch was no more than two feet wide and maybe six feet long.
He dug until the thing was about seven feet deep. He filled an itty bitty bucket with little tiny shovelfuls of dirt, lifted it over the edge of the ditch, dumped it. Repeat ad infinitum. Bill showed him exactly where he’d find the break, he dug another four inches, and water seeped to the surface. He cleared out the trench around the break. He pulled himself up out of the ditch. He brushed off his khakis, corduroy jacket, and flat cap. Then he walked off, and we never saw him again.
The rest of the room took a couple weeks. It’s like nothing ever happened except it is much nicer. I guess you can solve most of these problems if you throw enough money at them.