In this holiday season, when you turn on your faucet or flush your toilet, it would be appropriate to thank that great unseen force, the one that keeps the water running and-thank goodness-the sewage flowing.
The force that takes care of the elk in Elk Grove Village. The force that makes shopping at Woodfield Shopping Center a neat experience. The force that, in what has to be one of the worst jobs of all, scrapes roadkill off the highways.
In other words, it`s a time to pay tribute to those with the invisible jobs who make life a little less bumpy for the rest of us by doing the things that a lot of people wouldn`t do no matter how much the job paid.
Most of the time, if their jobs are done right, no one will notice.
One of these people, in fact, wants to keep such a low profile that he doesn`t want his name used. ”I`m a very private person, and I ask that you respect that,” he said.
His desire for privacy could have something to do with all the dirt he knows. He has an interesting perspective, working in a public works department in a tiny McHenry County village.
Among the places he plies his trade is in the sanitary sewer main. He can be found each day at one particular spot: the collection point where large foreign objects accumulate.
”That`s the biggest thing nobody sees or knows about. There are some nasty things that have to be done in the sewer,” he said. ”Sometimes it takes 10 minutes to clean it out, and sometimes I`m working on it for more than half an hour. It all depends on what I find.”
Judging from what he has seen, a lot of the toys children just received for Christmas may be headed his way via the toilet. Among the treasures this guy has uncovered are ”a Wiffel Ball bat that must have been 2 1/2 feet long, children`s toys, toy cars, trucks, no dolls yet, tomatoes, pickles, no bodies yet, but we have found bones: steak and chicken bones I believe.
”They smell bad and all that kind of good stuff. You think that farms smell bad, they don`t hold a candle to a sewer. It can get pretty ripe in there.”
On a cleaner note, Wendell Manning of Elgin has one of the most high-profile invisible jobs in the northwest suburbs. Manning is the cleaning specialist at Woodfield Shopping Center in Schaumburg, working for the Taubman Co.
He and his crews have kept Woodfield`s 300,000 square feet of common area so squeaky clean that housewives often call him for advice.
”You`d be surprised at the number of housewives who call me on cleaning problems, especially carpet stain problems. The average housewife doesn`t have the opportunity to find (industrial strength cleaners) in the store, so I tell them where they can get them.”
But if you don`t mind, answer man is one job that Manning would prefer to shed. He`s busy, after all, and has been ever since he set foot on those spiffy mall floors 19 years ago. He and his workers must strip and wax all the floors and shampoo all the carpets in the mall`s common areas. And then there`s the mile of upper-level railing glass that must always be smudgeless. ”We have round-the-clock workers. They have been with me from one to 17 years,” Manning said. ”The mall was built like a puzzle, and every worker gets to clean a piece of the puzzle. Once you have your people organized it makes the job much easier.
”We maintain a certain level of cleanliness and want our shoppers to feel safe and comfortable here. If they feel good, they`ll come back. The goal is for me to have the place ready for the shoppers. I take a lot of pride in what we do.”
Harvard doesn`t have a Woodfield, but it does have a Harmilda. Certainly not the draw that a mall would be, Harmilda is nonetheless a sentimental fixture in this former milk mecca. A few years back the fiberglass cow, a community mascot, was assaulted.
”Somebody took after her with a baseball bat and smashed her face and broke her tail off,” said Steve Santeler, an alderman and Harmilda`s savior. Santeler knows auto bodies better; fixing them is his profession, after all. But for the good of Harvard, he was willing to try a cow.
”We had all these cars in the shop, and then there was this cow lying on her side on a bench,” he noted.
Harmilda herself tells the rest of the story. She is intact, once again standing vigil at the intersection of Illinois Highway 173 and U.S. Highway 14.
Then there are the real live animals, such as the elk in Elk Grove Village. Were a problem as severe as what happened to Harmilda to occur, the Brookfield Zoo would get the call. But in the normal course of the elk`s lives, the responsibility falls to David McGinty and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.
McGinty, assistant superintendent of conservation for the district, said of the seven elk, ”We manage the herd and keep it viable by keeping them well fed and watered. The animals are quite a showpiece.”
McGinty said that during the spring and summer months the forest preserve lets the animals fend for themselves, but when the weather becomes colder and food more scarce, district laborers Alfredo Aguirre and Armando Martin begin visiting the animals.
”They sure know our yellow truck. As soon as they see it they perk up because they know we have food for them,” Aguirre said. ”Sometimes they want to play, but for the most part they`re pretty good animals.”
”Well, we have to watch out for that big guy,” Martin interjected, referring to the one bull that lives among the cows and calves. ”He can be dangerous.”
That hint of fear prompts Martin to work quickly, hopping off the truck and emptying his bag of corn, whole oats and a protein supplement into the elk`s food containers with speed and agility.
The animals are fed a specific balanced diet, McGinty said, and only the forest preserve workers are allowed to feed them. He added that the elk`s health would be in danger if visitors fed them.
They are the offspring of nine cows and one bull bought in 1925 from the National Park Service in Jackson Hole, Wyo. They live at the northwest corner of Arlington Heights Road and Higgins Road.
Then there are the animals that don`t live in captivity, the wild ones that stray onto roads, just passing by or in search of some consumable litter tossed out by a motorist.
Roadkill has become something of a joke, yet people of good conscience have to feel some pity when they drive by a creature whose only sin was venturing a little too close to man and his machines. But pity or not, the job of removing the remains must go to someone, and it is in no way a pleasant undertaking.
”We pick up dead animals on our roads. Sometimes it`s unpleasant. It depends on how squished they get,” said Ken Franklin, public works supervisor in Gilberts. Fortunately, he also gets to some animals before the creatures reach the highway. ”We`ve picked up wild raccoons in people`s yards,” he said, ”and let them loose in the forest preserve.”
But because he is 50 percent of his department, Franklin has a lot more to do than animal duty. The responsibility he takes the most pride in is landscaping. ”I really like the landscaping and felt good about the job we did in front of the Village Hall,” said Franklin, who lives in
Carpentersville.
Other jobs include maintaining the Village Hall, including plumbing and such infrastructure; keeping the grounds manicured; and patching roads. But regardless of what Franklin is working on, he said the small-town atmosphere helps make his day brighter.
”People talk to you or wave when you go by. It`s a real friendly town. And I do get letters once in a while from people who appreciate what we do,” Franklin said. ”Sometimes it can be uncomfortable out there in the cold and mud, and it`s good to hear a good word.”
Over in South Elgin, public works director Rick Zirk said he and his colleagues also appreciate a kind word: ”In our town, a lot of people do give you a pat on the back and say thank you.”
But in South Elgin, it takes a lot more people to keep up with demand.
”We`re facing a lot of growth here,” Zirk said. ”We`ve had 189 building permits during the last six months. Maybe that`s not a lot for a big town, but for our small town it`s very significant.
”You see the trees being cut or the streets being swept and how different they look when the job is done, but those who maintain the water system never receive the recognition they deserve. People turn on their faucets and just expect the water to come out. They don`t give it a second thought or consider what goes into making that system work properly.”
And making the system work does have its hazards. David Martin, a water system operator in South Elgin, talks about the danger in a casual way. When a water main breaks, someone has to go underground to fix it, and Martin is usually that someone.
”It`s a messy job working eight feet underground in an area saturated by water,”he said. ”Sometimes one guy stands above just to watch and make sure the sides don`t cave in. He will also hand the guy in the hole the necessary tools. We never leave tools in there with us because if the sides do cave in, the tools can get buried. You could spend all day digging for them. The shorter amount of time you`re in there, the better.”
Martin, who lives in South Elgin, does other things for the village as well. He maintains 90 percent of the larger vehicles for the public works department and plows streets every winter. That`s also the time of year that Martin finds himself sitting pretty high above it all, stringing lights from the South Elgin water tower.
”It gets icy up there, so I`m always real careful,” Martin said. ”I do a variety of things. When you work in a small community everyone gets to do a little bit of everything.”
Over in the more urbanized Hoffman Estates, the jobs are more narrowly defined. Neal Burisch, for example, was promoted to the flushing truck recently, where he stops problems in the sewer system before they start.
”We have a flushing program. We flush out our main lines with high-pressure water that goes through a hose,” Burisch said.”I like this job. We take turns on the flushing vehicle, but I`m in charge.”
The common thread that runs through all these jobs is that these people seem to genuinely like their jobs, however thankless they might be.
Mark Martin loves his. He owns Interior Tropical Gardens in Union. The company, which he started eight years ago, leases and maintains plants for companies that want some green ambience.
”It`s great to wake up in the morning and say, `I`ve got something great to do.` I wouldn`t trade my job for anything in the world,” Martin said.
”And when I make someone smile, that really makes my day. That`s really worth a million dollars.”
He recalled one time going into a company while on his rounds and seeing a woman who looked distressed. She had expected flowers from her husband for a special day; they didn`t come. Martin went back to his van, picked out a pretty plant and gave it to her. Now that`s service.
Martin said he inherited his green thumb from his mother, who, like other mothers, probably never received all the pats on the back that she deserved. Relatively speaking, mothers tend to be the universal unseen force: acting as cook, maid, intermediary, and rarely receiving the credit due.
”I don`t think my children will really appreciate what I do until they become mothers themselves,” said Debbie Dohn of Rolling Meadows, who has two daughters, Rebecca, 3, and Lisa, 2.
In addition to caring for her little ones, Dohn juggles two part-time jobs: one at Dominick`s Finer Foods in Rolling Meadows and one for a typesetting company, which she does from her home. Although she admits that husband Jim does help around the house, Dohn said she`s in charge of the day- to-day cleaning and the power struggles between her children.
”Sometimes I feel like I`m being pulled in all directions, and when that happens I try to handle emergencies first,” Dohn said. ”I figure if it sounds like my daughters are going to kill each other then I`ll intervene. Otherwise I ask them to work it out by themselves.”
When the diaper changing, vacuuming, dishwashing, cooking and argument-stopping become overwhelming Dohn said she sometimes loses her cool and finds herself yelling at her kids. That`s when her 3-year-old puts the thankless job back into perspective.
”It`s usually then that Rebecca will run up to me, give me a big hug and say, `Mom, I love you,` ” Dohn said. ”So even though she`s too young to appreciate all that I do, in her own way she does say thank you.”
