Very shortly after I started this blog, I was wondering how long I would need to consistently catalog sidewalk markings before I had earned the right to go off topic and start talking about something else I like: manhole covers. The answer is, evidently, about 14 months, because here it is, the first manhole cover of this blog. This beauty is on Hayford Avenue just south of the southwest corner of East Michigan Avenue and Hayford. The sidewalk here got redone recently due to a large new development, but the cover remained.

My recollection is that it is actually pretty common to see Bell System covers around Lansing. I assume they must date from prior to the breakup of the Bell System in 1984. Our local Bell was Michigan Bell. Its “Baby Bell” identity was Ameritech. Ameritech ended up becoming my ISP around 2000 when they brought DSL to my Lansing neighborhood. As a result, I acquired an Ameritech.net email address which has never gone away. It stayed through a couple of buyouts (as my ISP became SBC Global and then AT&T). Eventually I switched ISPs but the email address remains. It is now controlled by Yahoo, and I cannot fathom why someone is still paying for the domain, but it still works. I still give it out as my main email and it forwards to my “real” but less public email address. When I tell people my address now, I have to spell it. Often they don’t know what I’m saying and write something else down. It’s no longer a name people recognize around here. But I hang onto the address as a point of pride (how many people have had an email address two decades?) and will be sad when they eventually notice it still exists and delete it without warning. Apparently the forwarding shouldn’t even still work.