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”….
