The future is then.

St. Louis city is old. Well, old by US standards. Everything with regards to the city is a bit archaic and an amalgamation of the very old and the sort of new. I, of course, find this fascinating.

Things like computers are a fairly new commodity in the city. In fact they still maintain several databases on different terminal machines and one still has to physically get up and move to say, the St. Louis Metro PD terminal to check to see of your record is clean. There is no air conditioning at city hall beyond window units and meager forced air that does not much more than meekly ooze dank, slightly cooler air, but there is a brand new Justice Center built by cronyism and back alley deals. 10 year old computers with floppy drives sit atop stacks of giant 36x36 ledgers filled with property records from the 1800’s and both are still used on a regular basis.

You know, it’s a city held together by electrical tape, 200 year old lead pipes, and asbestos. There is no money so they’ve had to make do for the last 50 years or so. For each high tech solution grant money may buy them for one problem a low tech solution has existed for decades.

Tonight while walking the dogs I saw something incredibly low tech and extremely clever.

So, the water department has been working in our neighborhood. Not much of a surprise we have water mains break all the time. Well, these two chaps were checking a valve on our street to see if water was flowing through it to a hydrant that sprung a sizable leak. Since work was complete for the day, I assume they are checking to see if, after the leak was repaired and the hole filled, there is still a leak or a new leak.

How can they do this from a block away on a seemingly separate valve in someone’s front yard? Well, they take the tall valve wrench that they use to open and close valves and they put the wrench end onto the underground valve. Then… THEN… they take a receiver from an old candlestick telephone (the listening part) that has a bolt mounted through the bottom where the telephone cord used to go. They then take this modified receiver, set the bolt against the handle of the valve wrench and LISTEN TO THE SOUND OF THE WATER IN THE PIPES THROUGH THE FUCKING RECEIVER LIKE A GODDAMN STETHOSCOPE.

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