Kookooboy approached me one day and asked if I had any problems with the structural integrity of my house. I wasn't sure where he was going with this but I told him my house was fine, as far as I knew. He then told me the bus was '...twisting his house up like a pretzel.' I swear I'm not making this up and a check with this cities transit authority will confirm this. I asked him to elaborate, perhaps I was missing something. He said when the city bus came by, which it does every half hour or so, it was hitting the man hole cover on the street in front of our houses and knocking his house down. I told him he needed a structural engineer (and I think I mentioned Valium). This little bit of lunacy is still current and has been going on for years. It rivals the 'Auxiliary Driveway' for compulsive behavior. His first course of action was to phone the city Streets Department and rag on them every few days to fix the manhole. Parallel to this was to stop every bus that went by and scream at the driver for going too fast. Stopping the busses culminated in a screaming session at a driver one morning in a bus full of school kids. In case anyone in the city wasn't sure whether this guy was touched or if anyone hadn't heard of him, this clenched it. That was the last driver confrontation as far as I know. The phone calls to the transit people still persist to this day, I'm sure.
So one day I notice a minivan with the transit markings on the side parked out front and a guy standing by the offending manhole, looking things over and taking notes. I strolled over for a chat. The city had gone so far as to take seismic readings from his chimney stack! This guy had been inside JD9's house and at one point in our conversation, leaned forward and said, "People shouldn't live like that." I asked him what he thought it would take to fix the cover, as it looked fine to me. He suggested knocking down the seniors center -ha ha. Obviously he knew Kookooboy.
His next course of action was to paint the manhole cover day-glow orange like the maintenance people do when they mark something for service. His markings included two foot letters on either side of the cover saying "BUS STAY OFF". This graffiti was a bit much. A little research and I found the city representative that was responsible. He told me he had given Kookooboy a can of paint and said he could spray the cover until the repair crew could get out there. The writing stopped that day but the orange cover persisted - but not with paint supplied by the city.
Then, one fine day, a maintenance crew pulled up to the evil manhole. They repaved around the cover and fixed it up just fine, all the while, with Kookooboy overseeing the project. I was pleased to see the service crew and hoped they had fixed a hole in the street around the corner that really did need work. They did. So, case closed? Not by long shot!
A few days later, the orange day-glow paint showed up again! I caught him one day, refreshing the paint and asked him what he wanted to see done with it? It was fixed! It was fine before and better now! Does it need to be polished? He told me it was none of my business and it was between him and the city.
The day-Glow orange cover can still be seen to this day, out my kitchen window.
The paint has faded over the winter, but as soon as Da Vinci next door gets his spray can out for the season, I'll update the pictures with improved, more vivid colors. When a bus goes over this manhole cover, his house crumbles. He seems to rebuild it before I get a chance to confirm the damage.
June 22, 2002
It's now summer, and true to form, and pretty much on schedule, the artist has come out of his winter retirement armed with his trusty can of day-glow orange paint. This is now what the manhole cover looks like -
Quite striking, isn't it? While I was taking these pictures, I had an opportunity to witness first hand how well this was working. A bus rolled by! In the following pictures, you see the bus go by and... Kookooboy's HOUSE IS STILL STANDING! So, obviously, the paint is doing its job! Even the Everbrown tree seems oblivious to the disturbance. Mind you, it's dead, so it probably doesn't care either way. Well, don't I feel silly for thinking the orange paint was merely a public showing of compulsive behavior by graffiti - or 'PS of CB Disorder'. I think the gravel piles are a little flatter, though. Perhaps if I paint my driveway day-glow orange, the parging on my house will stop cracking.
Kookooboy does not like any interruptions while he's creating, so he does his best work under the cover of darkness. He made these latest improvements to the neighborhood in the middle of the night. I have caught him prowling around the neighborhood at odd times, like 2:00AM. Or, perhaps, a city crew came out and did this while everyone was asleep.
March 18, 2003
Spring may have arrived, the weather has warmed. The snow is all but gone from the streets. I saw a motor cycle on the road yesterday No robins yet, but the true sign of spring has arrived - Kookooboy updated the paint on the infamous manhole cover overnight. Somehow, over the winter, the paint had pretty much faded to nothing. Fortunately, Kookooboy is always on the job. The streets are not completely dry yet and are still covered with an abundance of gravel - but you can't be too careful with this sort of thing. I wonder why the snow wasn't painted orange all winter? I would have thought four inch deep snow ruts would pose a bigger problem than the one inch round hole in the middle of a manhole cover. But who am I to say, my house isn't "...twisting up like a pretzel."
A Lunatics work is never done
The cover now looks pretty much like it did last year, just before the snow came. Faded, but clearly discernable. I'm sure it will get a second coat soon. Hey, up until last night, there was no paint on it at all! Indiscriminate pounding by wayward drivers was rampant! It was anarchy!
I wonder how long this community will tolerate these shenanigans. I'm certainly not going to do anything about it, unless they become a hazard, like the time he surrounded the cover with sand bags.
June 18, 2003: Stronger Message
For the love of God, Off!
So can I assume graffiti is OK around here? Or do you have to be crazy to get away with it?
JD9's Fine Yard The Auxiliary Driveway The Transit System
My Dangerous Barbecue My Faulty Parking New Fence New Trees
The Garbage Can Incident How 'Koo-Koo Boy' was Coined The Seniors Complex
Previous Owners Miscellaneous Stories about Koo-Koo Boy
Updates & New Adventures The Manhole Opinions?