The Penn's Grove record., 1884-03-01
Life I'm the City Sewers.

Life In the City Sewers.
jerry Barns has been III the employ
Of some one of the Highway Depart.
ment contractors in Philadelphia fol-
thirty of his sixty years. During this
time he has been engaged almost exclu-
sively IN the repair of sewers. AT least
one-quarter Of his life has been spent
under the cobblestones. Through long
association with things oozy and reptil-
ian Jerry has gained himself a some.
what oozy and reptilian aspect. His
eyes are bleared. They look closely
down each side of his nose, which is
long and seems to overlap his ~retreating
chin. There were traces of sewer mud
on the bottom of his trowseis as he
stood in the courtyard of the Public
Buildings in that city recently. Per-
haps there was an atmosphere of sewer
dampness about him. Perhaps his APP
pearanee only suggested it.
Jerry's life having been spent in sew
ers, Jerry's idea is that a great sewer is
the noblest of earthly creations. He
gloated over the building of the big Sc
cond street sewer and rejoiced at the ex-
cavation of the subterranean Schuylkill
ON Girard avenue. These things SEEM
ed greater to him than the Compromised
completion of the Post Office or the
erection of the Penn Square ~sarcopha-
gus. His life IS a dream of sewers.
When the great Partisan sewers were
exploited and illustrated with pictures
of parties boating through them and
later on of Gardes Mobile watching,
with fixed bayonets, the advent of Prus-
sian spies and jabbing for fun and a
~tricassee the eve rats, Jerry's eyes
stuck out with delight, envy and incre-
dulity. Lately the desire of his life has
been to visit the great new Boston sew
ers.
jerry has met and vanquished strange
foes in the substrata. He is slimy'St.
George with a great many dragons.
The lesser OF these, the small fry of
blind Lizards and big rats, that he
meets daily in his underground rambles
he cares little for, save when a troop of
the latter grow bold enough, as they
did last fall, to drive him up a Della.
ware venue manhole. He has had one
experience, however, which he told ON
Saturday for the thousandth time per-
haps.
Back in 80, when it happened, the
Callowhill street sewer was clogged in
a nasty bend near Seventh street. Res
idents of the neighborhood told strange
stories of the noises that came up
through the MASTERPIECES, and all roman
tic minds imagined the presence of an
escaped prisoner in the sewer. That
there were something strange in the
place was evident to the workman who
opened the trap for Jerry to go down.
Most of the NOISE was splashing and
stopping. The escaped prisoner idea
gained ground.
"Though no one" said Jerry, "could
tell where he'd escaped from, unless it
was the Morgue at the foot of Noble
street."
Jerry went down with his candle. He
anne back without it.
81 threw the dip into the things
jaws and climbed up in the divil's own
hurry" he said. How to get the ALI
gator, for such it was, out to the sewer,
was the next question. Someone thought
of angling for it with a roast of beef,
but jerry knew that the monster must
have grown up in the place and that he
would therefore be blind. Finally the
bright idea occurred that residence in
a sewer ought not to destroy the sense
of smell if it did that of sight. A very
rank piece of beef was accordingly let
down.
whether he smelled that or not l
don't know" said Jerry, ''but after I'd
laid for him for about two hours with a
gun. he struggled under the manhole
and l popped hun. He was about half
grown. The news spread all over town,
and pretty soon along came a seafaring
man with fire in his eye. On fe,' SEE
he 'what'd We kill my alligator for2'
at turned out that the sailor chap
lived down near the foot of Willow
street and had a lot of young alligators
that he'd brought back from Florida in
tub in his back yard. This one escaped
and came up the sewer, likin' the slime,
| s'pose' and lookin' for pickaninnies.
[ s'pose he lived on lizards. Anyway,
this sailor man was mad as blazes and
said that if we'd sent tor him he'd coax
ed the brute up the manhole."
Jerry rid the neighborhood of Seven
teenth and Spring Garden streets once
of a worse pest than an alligator. This
a polecat that had been depreciat-
ing valuable property in the neighbor-
hood for about a month in the summer
of 1880. He lived in the ever and
came out of an inlet at night.
~ croaked him Just az lac stuck his
nose into the moonlight one evening"
said Jerry.
The sewer rats are said to be friends
of Jerry. In the heavy sewer freshet of
September, 1882, hundreds of these
animals were drowned. Contractor
Armstrong says that Jerry buried them
all in Delaware mud and has never bsea
the same man since.
A FOUR year-old child complained to
- oo.bar +bat her ssbntfOn-shOes' were