There’s nothing like the loss of electricity to make a house feel broken.
In a recent column entitled, “Did You Find the Squirrel?”, I wrote about an exciting afternoon of powerlessness on St. Peters Church Road, thanks to a cute furry creature that blew up the transformer on the power pole, incinerating himself and causing our house to be hurtled back in time to the candlepower days of the 19th century.
The loss of power was inconvenient, but last week we encountered a problem that turned back the clock even further, to pre-Roman times: a complete shut-down of the plumbing.
This wasn’t simply a case of a single stopped drain or plugged toilet. All drains were stopped, all toilets plugged.
In other words, it was panic time.
Indoor plumbing has been a staple of civilization ever since the Romans invented it, giving us the word “plumbing,” which is derived from the Latin plumbum, meaning “lead,” the soft metal first used for pipes. In fact, the Romans held sanitation in such high regard that they literally worshipped at its altar. The Roman Forum was the site of a shrine to the goddess “Cloacina,” whose bailiwick included the Cloaca Maxima, or “Great Sewer,” that ran under the Forum. Visitors to the Forum can still see the round marble foundation of Cloacina’s shrine, which archaeologists speculate was also an access point to the sewer below, making it a sort of theological manhole cover.
The goddess Cloacina is thought to have been appropriated from the Etruscans. She started out as a goddess of purity. The idea of associating her purity with Rome’s Great Sewer was most likely an attempt to confer her powers of cleanliness to the filthiest place in the city. But over time, thanks to this association, she became known as the goddess of filth. This kind of role reversal happens more commonly than you might think, often the result of a new religion trying to stigmatize the gods of an older one. Ultimately, she was associated with Venus, the goddess of love, and became known as “Venus Cloacina.” The deep ambivalence about Cloacina’s nature may have eventually led to the strangest of all her duties, “protector of sexual intercourse within marriage.”
(I am not making this up.)
I learned about Cloacina after the fact, but maybe if I’d offered the proper sacrifices, our septic system wouldn’t have decided to up and quit on us.
One of the glories of Perry County is that so many contractors here are willing to help out in case of an emergency. Thinking that our problem might be solved by having the septic tank pumped out, I called Advanced Septic (789-4548). Despite being crazy busy on account of all the recent rain, they were able to squeeze us in that very day.
The guys on the vacuum truck couldn’t have been friendlier or more helpful. They pumped the tank, and even tried snaking the pipe. But despite their best efforts, the obstruction remained.
The next call was to our trusty plumber, Gary Blumenschein (789-4118). Gary showed up that evening, after hours, in torrential rain. Together we tried snaking the pipe, but encountered the same obstruction. We snaked it from the other direction, and for a few happy hours, it seemed we had solved the problem.
Alas, the goddess of the toilets was still not placated.
Gary speculated that the rubber connector, or “Fernco,” between the cast-iron pipe from the house and the PVC pipe running into the septic tank, was the source of the problem. “If the snaking doesn’t hold,” he said, “you’re going to have to dig that thing up and see what’s going on down there.”
Which is what led to the last call of the day, to Chad Shuman (438-3843). Chad agreed with Gary’s assessment. He offered to come out the next day and start digging.
The excavation revealed that the septic tank had settled over the years, and probably more rapidly this wet spring. The Fernco, stretched to its limit, had finally broken off the cast-iron pipe, blocking everything headed downstream.
Despite the nasty rain and a yard that was essentially a mud pit, Chad managed to fix the problem. Then he had the audacity not to charge me extra for clearing his schedule and doing the work on an emergency basis.
I’m delighted to report that we can now bathe, wash dishes, and, yes, flush.
Which leads me to the title of this column, a play on Julius Caesar’s famous, “I came; I saw; I conquered.”
The unfamiliar verb here, “Cacavi,” is from the Latin cacare, which is where we get the child’s word for defecation, “ca-ca,” or “ka-ka.”
I’ll leave the rest of the translating to you.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 02 June 2011
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
