The Day the Plumbers Buried a Lake Under the Baha'i Gardens

My uncle was a plumber for forty years. He used to say that nobody claps when the toilet flushes. You only hear about plumbers when something breaks. When everything works right, people forget you were ever there.

That is how it should be at the Baha'i Temple in Wilmette. The grass is green. The flowers bloom. Tourists take pictures and never think about where the water comes from. But underneath those pretty gardens, there is a concrete vault big enough to hold a lake. And underneath that concrete, there is a story about a crew of local tradies who showed up on a cold morning and did something nobody thought was possible. The ones who made it happen? Just a bunch of regular guys. The kind you would call if your hot water system blew up. The kind who answer the phone at 2am when a pipe bursts. The very same temple plumbers who spent years working on homes all over Chicago before taking on the biggest job of their lives.

This is that story

The Place

To see how hard this job was, you have to knowledge the Baha'i Temple. It is located on Sheridan road and it is on the lake. The structure itself appears to be a dream thing. White stone. Curves everywhere. A dome with a lattice-like cover which resembles frozen lace. Grandmother would refer to it as the wedding cake temple.

There are nine gardens around the building. They do not consist of a random flower bed. Everything is planned. The paths curve just so. The hedges are cut in a straight line. People get married there. People spread ashes there. And people are sitting on benches crying or laughing or simply staring at the lake.

You cannot turn up that with a backhoe.

But the gardens need water. Lots of it. The temple utilized city water during nearly a century. Clean water. Drinking water. The type of water that you are charged by the gallon. They sprinkled it on the grass and left it to sink into the dust.

This was what the Baha'i community considered and said it was wrong. We are concerned about looking after the earth. We should catch the rain. We must make use of what comes down in the sky.

Then they had a mind to construct a cistern. A big one.

The Problem

Here is where it gets tricky. A cistern is nothing but a tank in the ground. You make a hole, you drop the tank, you cover. Simple.

With one exception, when you cannot where the tank must pass excavate.

The engineers surveyed the property. Under the gardens was the most convenient place to put cistern. Even the second best place was beneath the gardens. All good ones were beneath something beautiful no one wished to cut.

They considered having a group of smaller tanks that were distributed. That did not work. They considered burying the tank in the basement. That did not work either.

At last someone added, well, how about having the tank constructed on-site? Suppose we take in bits and make up a puzzle?

That is why they ended up having sixteen concrete modules. They were each thousands of pounds. All of them were forced to fit snugly in their place against each other. A half an inch would make the entire thing leak.

What they needed now was someone to make them fit.

 

 

The Guys

Prince Plumbing is not a high-class company. Their TV commercial is nonexistent. They do not operate wrapped trucks that have logos so big like a car. They are just plumbers. Chicago plumbers. What type of boys will come down to the office at six in the morning and order coffee in a thermos and discuss the Bears.

I met a few of them at a diner near the job site. Let me call them Tony and Rick. Tony is maybe sixty. Gray hair. Hands like catcher's mitts. Rick is younger. He did most of the talking.

"We knew it was gonna be tight," Rick said. "The hole was already dug. They wanted it done yesterday. No pressure."

Tony just nodded. He was busy with his eggs.

The temple plumbers from Biaggi had done a lot of weird jobs over the years. They had worked in basements with three feet of headroom. They had replaced water heaters in million dollar homes where the homeowner watched every move. But this was different.

"This was a temple," Rick said. "Not just a building. A temple. You feel that. You walk on the grass and it feels different. Like church. You don't want to mess it up."

The Morning

The day started before sunrise. Tony and Rick met the crane operator at the gate. The hole was waiting. Sixteen concrete modules were stacked on flatbed trucks. The temple plumbers stood around and stomped their feet to stay warm.

Nobody talked much. They knew what they had to do.

The crane hooked the first module. It swung up off the truck, hanging in the air like a concrete kite. Tony stood at the edge of the hole and waved his arms. Left. Right. Down. Slow. Slow. Stop.

The module settled into place. Tony climbed down into the hole. He walked around the module. He ran his hand along the edges. He nodded.

"Good," he said. "Next."

That was the rhythm for the next eight hours. Crane. Hook. Swing. Lower. Check. Next.

By noon, Tony's hands were raw. The concrete was rough. The edges were sharp. He did not complain. He just kept waving his arms.

Rick worked the seals. Every module had to be connected to the next one with a rubber gasket. If the gasket was pinched or twisted, water would leak out. Rick got down on his knees in the dirt and felt along the seams. He used a flashlight. He used his fingers.

"You can't see a bad seal," he said. "You gotta feel it."

The Afternoon

Around three o'clock, the crane hit a snag. One of the modules was heavier than the others. The crane operator could not get the angle right. The module swung wild, almost catching Tony in the shoulder.

Tony stepped back. He did not yell. He just looked at the module, looked at the crane, looked at the hole.

"Turn the truck," he said.

So they turned the truck. They repositioned the crane. They tried again. This time the module slid in clean.

Nobody said anything. Nobody clapped. Tony just waved for the next one.

By five o'clock, the last module was in place. Rick sealed the final connection. Tony walked the whole row, checking each seam. The temple plumbers stood at the edge of the hole and looked down at what they had built.

Sixteen modules. Sixteen thousand pounds of concrete. All in one day.

"Not bad," Tony said.

The Wrap

The cistern did not look like much. It was just a row of concrete boxes sitting in a muddy hole. But the temple plumbers knew what it would become.

Next came the liner. A giant sheet of heavy plastic, thick enough to stop water from soaking into the dirt. They draped it over the whole cistern, tucking it into every corner. Then came the protective fabric, soft and white, to keep sharp rocks from puncturing the plastic.

The excavation crew pushed dirt back into the hole. The cistern disappeared. Dirt covered the plastic. More dirt covered the dirt. By the time they were done, you could not tell there was anything there.

The gardeners came next. They brought topsoil and mulch and little green plants. They worked for weeks, patching the grass, resetting the hedges, making everything pretty again.

By spring, the gardens looked like they had never been touched.

The Water

Now when it rains, the water runs off the temple roof. It flows through pipes that the temple plumbers buried under the access road. It fills the cistern, inch by inch, gallon by gallon.

After the cistern is full, the temple is able to irrigate the gardens 3 or 4 nights. No city water. Just rain.

During winter, the plumbers of the temple ensured nothing was going to freeze. It has a valve which opens when it is colder. The water passes the cistern and to the drainage channel. The tank is dry and empty awaiting spring.

It was explained to me in the following manner by Tony. You never leave water in a pipe when it is going to freeze. The ice expands. The pipe cracks. Then you got a real problem. So you drain it. Simple."

Simple. It was the way anybody could have guessed.

Why It Sticks With Me

I have already written of many construction jobs. Bridges. Hospitals. Skyscrapers. But this one is different.

Tony and Rick do not believe that they had done something special. They showed up. They worked. They went home. That is what plumbers do.

But here is the thing. They worked on a temple. They worked on holy ground. And after they were executed, no one could say that they had been there.

The temple plumbers were not signatories of their work. There is no plaque. No brass plaques with their names on it. Tourists pass over that cistern daily and make photos and do not know.

Tony does not care. "I know," he said. "I was there."

Conclusion

The Baha Temple has remained the same. The dome still shines. The gardens still bloom. There is no way you would have figured out that there are sixteen concrete modules beneath the grass.

But on each rain a little more water is gathered in the cistern. When the sprinklers are on, it drinks on the gardens as well. And somewhere in Chicago Tony and Rick are most likely making another shift and are sipping coffee out of a thermos, not even thinking of the temple.

And that is the way with plumbers. They do the work and move on. They do not wait for applause. They do not need recognition.

All they want is the toilet to flush. All they desire is the water flowing. They are simply seeking to work and come home.

And at the Baha'i Temple, thanks to the hand of some temple plumbers who had even spent a freezing day in a muddy hole, the work is not yet wrong. The water still flows. The gardens are yet drinking the rain.

Nobody claps. But the flowers bloom anyway