The Philosophy
It was a Tuesday in August. The air was heavy and smelled of sausage and cut grass. The Cubs were down by two runs. I walked down the concrete ramp into the restroom. It was loud down there. The sound of forty thousand people was just a rumble in the ceiling.
I waited. The line moved fast. It always did. There was no vanity there. Just a long wall of stainless steel. It was cold and clean and honest. It did not pretend to be something else. It was a trough.
I stood there shoulder to shoulder with men I did not know. A banker in a suit. A bricklayer in dust. We were all the same. There were no stalls to hide in. No ceramic dividers to keep us apart. It was communal. It was efficient. It was the way things used to be.
I looked at the steel. It was scratched from years of use, but it was not broken. It was strong. It handled the job without complaint. It was a simple machine for a complicated city.
"This," I thought, "is good plumbing."
That is why we build them. We build them for the bars on Clark Street and the breweries in Avondale. We build them because they work. We build them because sometimes, you just need honest steel.