The copper pipe ran through the walls of every building on the block. You could not see it but you could hear it. The pipes knocked when the heat came on. The pipes whistled when the water ran. The copper pipe was the nervous system of the building. The copper pipe carried the water and the water carried the life.

A plumber on Avenue B told me that copper pipe is the most honest material in the building. He said copper does not lie. If the pipe is green the pipe is old. If the pipe is bright the pipe is new. Copper tells you its age by its color. Copper turns green the way a person turns gray. The green is not damage. The green is experience.

The pipes in the tenement on East Seventh Street were original. Eighteen ninety-two. They had been carrying water for over a hundred years. The same pipes that filled my bathtub filled somebody else's bathtub in nineteen ten. The water changed but the pipe did not. The pipe remembered every drop. A hundred years of baths and dishes and glasses of water at three in the morning. The copper pipe was the memory of the building.

They steal copper pipe. Everybody knows this. The building goes vacant and the thieves come in and strip the copper out of the walls. Copper is worth three dollars a pound. A building has a thousand pounds of copper. Three thousand dollars for the guts of a building. The thieves take the nervous system and the building goes numb. A building without pipes is a body without veins.

They use plastic pipe now. PVC. White. Cheap. It does not turn green. It does not knock when the heat comes on. It does not whistle when the water runs. The plastic pipe is silent and the silence means the building has stopped talking to you. The copper pipe had a voice. The plastic pipe is mute. I miss the knocking. I miss the building telling me the heat was coming.

See also: Iron Railing, Water Pump