Imagine Caesar took his troops to the Rubicon, crossed the river and then, a thousand paces later, turned back. The Senate did not know what to do with him until the leader of the Parthians offered to act as an intermediary. He retired to Cappadocia with a few hand-picked troops, where he lived out his days until he fell out of a fourth-story window at the age of thirty-six.
Imagine, further, that, when he crossed back into Cisalpine Caul, he said, ‘Alea deiacta est’. That is Latin for, ‘The toothpaste is back in the tube’.
Prigozhin crossed the Rubicon when he ordered his mercenaries to seize the Russian military base in Rostov on Don. Like Caesar, he began a march on the capital, with the possibility of civil war. But unlike Caesar, he tried to de-cast the die. Twenty-four hours after he started the coup attempt, he realized that he was a hotdog chef, not a military leader, and he could not play for that type of stakes. He turned around and tried to put the toothpaste back into the tube.
As Dan Quayle’s wife said to Prigozhin on their wedding night, ‘You’re no Julius Caesar’.
Last week, the maintenance guy at my park in central New York did a shitty job of pouring a pad for a new home. The code enforcer questioned the quality of the workmanship. The installer said he could put the home on the pad so long as he put hardwood blocks under the blocks that will support the frame of the home. I conveyed the message to the code enforcer. She signed off on the project.
Two potential issues can arise in the construction of a mobile home pad. The first is insulation. Manufactured home foundations are designed to be frost-proof.[1] There are two ways that this can be done. The first is for the foundation to consist of a series of cement piers, or underground columns that extend four feet into the ground. The size, shape and configuration of the piers depend on the climate zone and soil composition of the site and the design of the applicable home. The other solution is for the foundation to consist of a slab of concrete. The slab has to be six inches thick with a one foot-by-one foot haunch surrounding it. The haunch has to be surrounded by insulating foam board and the perimeter of the pad can be no more than three inches from the side of the home-box when the home is installed.
The second issue that can affect the construction of a manufactured home pad is that the surface of a pad should be smooth. Since cement blocks rest on top of a pad and since cement blocks are brittle, an uneven pad can cause the blocks that support the home to crack. This is the issue that the code enforcer spotted when she first inspected the pad. Her initial email said, ‘I am OK with the thickness of the pad, but its surface is uneven.’
I relayed her concern to the installer. He said that he had had this problem before and that it could be addressed by putting hardwood blocks between the blocks and the pad. Since the wood has some give, it can absorb the force that would otherwise crack the cement blocks. I told this to the code enforcer, and she gave the project the green light.
While this was happening, Clayton was chomping at the bit to deliver the home. I had already asked them if they could delay delivery long enough for the cement in the pad to cure. ‘We are a manufacturer, not a warehouse’, the sales rep told me, when I asked that. ‘If you can’t take delivery now, we will sell your home to someone else and build another one for you.’
‘How long would that delay things?
‘Eight weeks.’
‘Shit’.
So, I pleaded a little and they agreed to delay delivery until Friday of this week. I called AirBNB to arrange travel. Then, this morning, my phone farted and emitted a flip-flop from the code enforcer:
Code Enforcer to Me: I have been doing some research on the uneven pad and setting the home. The hardwood cannot go under the blocks – it can go on top of the blocking tho as shims. Where the blocks meet the concrete pad – those areas will need to be ground flat – if you put blocking on an uneven pad, the blocks will break. I am sure your installer knows all of this. Let me know when he is bringing the home in. Thanks.
When I called the installer, he picked up on the first ring. ‘Fuck’, I said. ‘Sorry?’, he asked.
‘The code enforcer now says that you can’t put hardwood under the cement blocks.’
‘We have done it a million times.’
‘Can you put it on ABS pads, if they have a problem with hardwood?’
‘Sure.’
Me to Code Enforcer: The installer has told me again that he has done this before and that it is OK. He has said that he can use treated lumber or ABS pads as a base.
The home will arrive on Friday. Since it is coming from Clayton, I can’t re-schedule the delivery date. Please let us know how to proceed.
I remembered the scene in Pulp Fiction where Jules and Vincent have to clean up the dead body before Jimmy’s wife comes home. This deadline was harder than that one. That was just a dead body. This is a multi-ton hunk of steel and plastic that has to be placed, well, somewhere. I hope this doesn’t devolve into a game of chicken, I thought. The code enforcer holds the nuts. I don’t know what we’ll do, if we can’t take delivery of the home. Then, my phone rang and the caller ID showed the code enforcer’s name. After I gave her the installer’s number, I said, ‘He said that he could use ABS pads, if wood blocks are a non-starter. That should be even better.’
‘What is an ABS pad?’
‘The hard plastic pad that we used to use for foundations, before we had cement foundations. They sat between the gravel base and the cement blocks.’
Me, to Installer: You can expect a call from the code enforcer. I think this is the first time she has dealt with manufactured homes. Be gentle with her as you educate her, please. Thank you for this.’
I understand that a certain number of candidates in Marine Corps OCS wash out every cycle because they are deemed unfit to lead people. One useful quality in a leader is consistency. That does not mean hobgoblin-of-little-minds foolish consistency. When the facts change, reasonable people change their opinions. But if you change your opinion when the facts don’t change, you run the risk of looking like you didn’t do your research. That can undermine your ability to lead park owners – and Marines and regular people, too.
[1] I am not sure why manufactured home foundations have to be frost proof. We were doing fine with pads made of gravel, crusher run and ABS pads until HUD decided to change things. Frost was never a problem with the old-school pads. But I don’t make policy.