Earl Inspecting Expansion Joints on a California Freeway Ron AI

 My nitpicking resulted in a lot of deconstruction and rework for crews on the jobsites, making them resentful of what I was doing. They began treating me like a pariah whenever I appeared. No more schmoozing by the foreman. They wanted me out of their sight; I had to eat my lunch alone.

Some of the crews began taunting me like the bullies had in high school and college. I paid them no mind. Randy seemed to like what I was doing. Living in that studio apartment with low rent, I was saving a lot of money. I bought a used car for Mom and began taking a graduate course in structural engineering offered by a local renowned university.

The course was offered in the evening at a local community college as the first Internet distance teaching in the country. Cable and microwave linked three universities and the various sites where the classes were held.

 There were 10 of us in the class, and the professor was on a big screen. We could ask him questions, and he would answer from many miles away, like magic. I liked it and asked a lot of questions.

Soon, the eight other guys and one gal—whoops, woman—gave me mean looks when I would ask a question. Worst of all, I got a letter from the engineering department telling me I was annoying the professor with all my questions and to stop doing it. I did, but I wanted to get that master’s degree.  I was overzealous to get it without the underpinnings of knowledge the other students already had.

 I persevered, and after two years, I received my degree, as well as a professional engineering license in the State of California from my years of working in the field.

When I got the degree, I asked Randy for a raise. When he told me, “No,” I resigned. I had saved enough so that I could go a few months without work.

# # #

And then that earthquake ruined my studio apartment. I moved into a cheap motel on the main drag paying weekly.

With no job prospects in sight, I hung out my shingle working from my motel room. When I got no calls from my ads in construction magazines, I saw a job going out for proposal from a Bay Area city to help curtail water leaks.  I jumped on it. After negotiating with the city council and reducing my fee, I got the contract.

The job was to find the source of all the reported leaks in waterlines. Typically, the water from a broken line would appear at a weak point on the surface as a crack in the concrete. I liked that. But I also knew a crack in the water line could be some distance from where the water flowed out at the surface.

I bought some tools: an imaging ground sonar and a snake with a camera on it.  I took off on the first morning to tackle the largest leaks first. A couple of main city lines had broken and were flooding the streets in their area. They were the easiest to locate and get the city crews in to fix.

From those city mains, I focused on distribution lines, and finally, on leaks in lines from the meters to houses where I had to approach the homeowner with a citation to get it fixed. That was something I hated to do, remembering how my mother had been cited many times for code violations in her shack.

I had fixed a few of them for her myself, but many never got fixed because we couldn’t afford a plumber or electrician. She worried so much, she died from emphysema, and I never had to help her again. I sold the shack, but I missed Mom and her love for me almost every day. My lifestyle was lonely without any close friends.

I finished the first contract well within the contracted time. Soon, I was approached by other cities in the area to work with them on their backlogs of water leaks. 

As I was finding leaky waterlines to houses, I found many also had cracks in their foundations. Those cracks were often the result of homeowners planting California live oak trees too close to their houses. I still felt cracks portended some kind of disaster.

I contacted some title companies in the Bay Area and qualified to be an inspector for structural damage in the always-growing California real estate market. On the side, I set up a structural repair business. I hired some immigrants off the street and taught them how to repair foundations with techniques that I’d learned and ones I invented.

Not only was I making money from my inspections, but I was also the president of my own structural repair business, CracksRUs. I soon made enough money to pay off my sisters’ college loan debts as well as buy a small house and stop living in cheap motels.

# # # 

Ten years went by, but I was too busy growing my business to even notice, eventually developing franchises for my brand, developing a first-class website, and expanding into the Southwest with plans for the entire country on my busy mind.

A lot of people who were joining me in my business counted on me, but there was no one I could really trust. My loneliness grew. Oh well, I thought, maybe when I retire?

One day, I found myself in the Lost Grottoes Hills on the Peninsula. I was inspecting a multimillion-dollar home I was interested in buying from an Internet mogul. I was down behind the house looking at an ancient redwood tree. A crack, not the tree, was the cause of the structural problem I saw. I had accidentally stepped on it when it happened . . .

I heard a rumbling sound from deep below me, and the earth opened right under me! I found myself falling into a chasm that formed. I fell for some time as the walls of the crevice convulsed. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, although it wasn’t very long that I tumbled.

I found myself prone, with a very sore back, on a precarious redwood branch that looked like it would give away at any moment.  If it did, I would fall further down into the bowels of the earth. When I looked up, I could see a faint light, but otherwise, it was very dark down there. I really couldn’t get my bearings. Have I broken my back? I thought. Is this revenge for my attempt to eliminate cracks?

The only thing I could do was yell. So, I yelled at the top of my lungs. But all I heard was a semblance of an echo. The house was vacant, and nobody knew I was there. Only my car parked in the driveway with my company logo on it gave any indication that I was there. That was all.

Aftershocks came and went. I hung on for dear life to bark and branches that slid down further with each one. I continued yelling until I was hoarse. My throat was dry, reminding me that I didn’t have any water with me. I tried my phone, but of course, it didn’t work this deep in the ground. Cracks had become my life, but this crack looked like my undoing, maybe my death.

I knew it was a bad earthquake, and there would be disruption all around the Bay Area. It would mean a boom in my business, but I was helpless thinking about it. I yelled every so often to see if anyone could hear me.

After what seemed like a long time, it got totally dark, but the earth didn't pay any attention to that. Aftershocks continued, to my distress, along with a lack of sleep. At least I wasn’t cold. In fact, it was warm. Too warm, and humid compared to the rather dry sub-climate just behind the coastal range, where it got very cool at night.

Occasionally, I would look at my cell phone to see what time it was, making it seem to take even longer for morning to come. I told myself to stop doing it to save the battery for when I might need it.

Eventually, after what seemed like forever, a sliver of light came down from above letting me know it was daytime again. I called out, but I didn't have the energy or the volume I had had the day before. I began to feel thirsty, and my throat dried out with the calling, so I stopped.

I just lay there thinking. My back ached. But I could think of nothing that would get me out of this mess. I began to think about what my eventual end might be; but it was too horrible to think about for long, and I drifted off into daydreams of a girl I once knew who didn’t even seem to want to talk to me. Why I dreamed of her I don’t know, but it filled the time until it became dark again.

Another horrible night and a day with no rescue in sight. More daydreams with no conclusion. When the light came again, my lips were cracked and my throat swollen. I couldn’t have called out if I tried. I slid into a deep depression that I was sure I wouldn’t come out of. If I could have committed suicide, I felt that would have been better than this. 

At least there were fewer aftershocks to scare me. I tried to fall off the redwood branch, but my aching back wouldn’t let me move.

Sometime in the night, my father, Charles, came to me and told me that he was still alive and living in Ensenada after hitting it big in Las Vegas. But it was just a dream, not reality, I told myself. What did it matter, anyway? I was about to die alone, unloved, and lost.

The trickle of dawn came again but I was losing the light, the light of life, when I heard it: a bullhorn bouncing off the walls of the crevice.

“I know you’re down there! Watch for the line and the sling! I’ll drag it back and forth at various levels. Catch it when it comes by. Tug two times when you have it, then three times when you’re ready to be pulled up.”

Even that sound was faint. In my delirium, I didn’t believe it was real. And then it wasn’t, not for some time. But then I found pebbles falling and dust coming up, and there was no aftershock. Something was disturbing the wall above me. I waited . . .

Suddenly, I thought of my cell phone. I turned its light on and waved it back and forth, hoping that whoever was up there with the bullhorn would see it and be able to reach me quicker.

And then I heard it. It sounded like a snake slithering along the wall, but it was a more mechanical, scraping sound. Before long, the line passed just above me, showering me with dust and pebbles. I thought I’d lost it when it came back at my level. As it crossed over me, I grabbed it with all my might, all the strength I had left. I pulled on it two times and tried to figure out how to get into the sling in my condition.

It took a while, but I finally managed to get into the sling and pulled on the cable again, three times. Suddenly, I was wrenched from that precarious tree branch. I nearly passed out from the pain in my back. I was dragged along the wall until the crevice became wide enough, and then I was in the middle of the opening being pulled toward the daylight above.

It was Ross Jenkins, my company supervisor. I was too delirious when I came out of the crack to know, but he told me later in the hospital I had told him I was going to the abandoned property. It was in foreclosure after the owner lost all his money. I had told him I was going to see if I would want to buy it for myself.

I asked him about my back. “Ross, is my back broken?”

“No, the doctor told me it was just badly wrenched. Just pulled back muscles. X-rays showed your back was surprisingly okay, considering your fall. No other broken bones, either. You were damn lucky. Your doctor said your back will heal with rest. Is it hurting now?”

“Now that I’m thinking about it, no. Not even when I turn.”

I thought but I didn’t say, Maybe I’m free from that superstition, that obsession.

To be continued...