Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The Governor Scrubs a Wall

Well, they were standing around looking at it, as I passed them on the morning trot. And on the way back, they were still standing around looking at it.
And what’s the “it?”
Nice, hunh? It’s La Fortaleza, officially known as Palacio de Santa Catalina, and the oldest governor’s mansion in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere. But that wasn’t the problem.
“We have to document all those holes,” said the woman to the guy wearing the suit. I had halted the Brahms and was walking especially slowly, since a good dish is always worth it.
They were referring to the wall, which the Spanish began constructing in 1640, and which still surrounds ¾ of the city. And what was the problem?
The governor had taken a pressure hose to it.
OK—not the governor himself, though he’s a kind of a hands-on guy. Yesterday, in fact, I had read that one of the governor’s security officers was in an accident, and the governor was on the side of the road, stanching a head wound with his handkerchief.
So for three weeks, a guy was out there with a pressure hose, blasting the wall with 1,200 pounds of pressure. And when a neighbor noted the activity, she sent a letter to Walter Chávez, the director of the neighboring fort, El Morro. The fort is run by the National Park Service, which a decade ago signed an agreement with the commonwealth stating that the Park Service would maintain the walls.
Well, the walls were dirty, said the governor’s spokesperson—they were full of hongo y excremento de palomas—mold and you-know-what from pigeons. So they called up the Department of Natural Resources, who recommended a tree trimmer named Armando Acsensio.
And what did the tree trimmer do?
He effectively—and with 1,200 pounds of water pressure, you can be very effective—destroyed four or five hundred years of patina. And if they have gotten to the grout that holds the thing together?
I’ve seen the National Park Service guys work on the wall. They’re up there with a spatula and a brush, and nothing else; it’s definitely a low-tech affair.
So in three weeks, a tree trimmer took away what had taken centuries to form. But not a problem, because some people like it.
It is, after all, “clean”….

2 comments:

  1. Power washing nearly ended my marriage! After fifteen years, the moss between the stones on the path around the house was velvety emerald: soft, rich, luscious. Jim got our handyman to power wash it. Four years later, it's just starting to recover. Our marriage survived, but he knows now that some things are non-negotiable!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Completely agree--and the ironic thing is that the National Park Service has a mason whose job it is to take care of the wall. But there's something in the male psyche that loves a loud machine....

    ReplyDelete