A good college friend earned part of his yearly tuition by working summers for his home city’s public works department, specifically on a sewer maintenance crew. A major in English and political science, he wrote an extended poem (quite humorous) about his pipe cleaning experience and the friends he made on the job.Later, in a final paper for a political science class, he put forward The Sewer Crew Theory of Government. He observed that his sewer maintenance squad took pride in responding to crises — in showing up at the scene of a big stoppage, fixing the problem and looking
