Orange Tubes

One early August day, a man arrived in our neighborhood, equipped with what looked like a metal detector. He scribbled red, blue, and yellow figures on our streets, lawns, trees, and street lamps. Then he disappeared. Two weeks later, a crew arrived, carrying jackhammers and shovels. Hard hatted men dug holes all over the place. By the time they were finished, our neighborhood looked like a war zone. Parts of our front yards were trampled and brown. Crude cement patches laced our sidewalks and streets. Don't worry, we were told, everything will be fixed.

Our telephone company was installing filber optic cables, pushed through orange tubes, and buried under our streets and lawns. Infrastructure! In the LA metropolitan area, infrastructure is virtually sacred. It's one of the main things that holds us together--wires, flood control channels, freeways, cables, sattelite signals, sewer systems, rail lines. So, when new infrastructure is added, we know that an important civic event is occurring. To my amazement, this kind of event was unfolding right outside our front door. That doesn't happen very often.