Now for something completely ridiculous.

When I walk around on campus, I look down a lot. At the sidewalks. And I guess I’m watching where I’m walking. Some things catch my eye.

Like the sidewalks on campus.

We’ve already had an editorial written this summer about the dangerous state of Charleston sidewalks. Since then, there have been some changes. Public Works has answered the call, somewhat, to the hazards of uneven sidewalks.

These uneven sidewalk blocks are what public works calls deviations, from the shifting of concrete from their initially placed positions.

The city knows about every sidewalk deviation. There are some on campus, too, as well as in the city.

However, some of the repairs made to the sidewalks on campus, are pretty sloppy jobs. That’s not to say there aren’t some fine slopes on the ground, but I’m sorry – some of the repairs look like not much effort was put in. From sidewalks criss-crossing campus and those on 4th street (to name a few), some repairs look terrible.

Deviations within a city are catalogued and set in queue for repair. But that’s the thing: how do you repair a drastically changed chunk of concrete?

Well, you use a sidewalk grinder, of course.

A what, you say?

Well think of it as this: it’s a combination between a jackhammer and a lawnmower, and every good public works department in the country has one.

And they’re just about as heavy as both a jackhammer and a lawnmower combined. A public works employee has to maneuver the nearly 80-pound mix of heavy metal parts on and off of the high-standing ledge of concrete.

Basically, the rotating metal gears grind away at the sharp edge of the sidewalk and the idea is to smooth the perpendicular edge to a sloped, ramp-like surface.

Grinding an average-sized sidewalk from side to side takes anywhere from 30 minutes to a little over an hour, depending on how high a block has risen from the ground.

It takes a lot of strength and endurance to shove and pull heavy machinery over concrete as it tears away at concrete – it creates a lot of concrete dust and a lot of noise.

Maybe I’m asking too much, but if we can ask for attention to detail on city safety as well as maintenance, some of the sidewalk deviations could be done better.

I know a fine sidewalk grind job when I see it – I worked in Public Works for a year, over half of that time spent smoothing over sidewalks. A good deviation repair looks like a work of art: the sidewalk blocks slope down and meet each other in a white-colored, polished concrete surface.

A bad repair looks like a steel-clawed bear raked at the sidewalk a few times and the left to find better things to do. Some of the deviations haven’t been fully repaired and make me wonder what some of the workers were thinking when they didn’t finish the job.

I mean, yeah it takes a long time to get to know how to operate the sidewalk grinder, and operate it well. It took me over two months of outdoor practice before I could turn a deadly deviation into a ramp fit for wheelchairs.

This is a reminder to Public Works employees to pay attention to detail on even the most strenuous and mundane of jobs. Those little details speak leagues of how much city workers care as well as how much beauty can come from something as bland as a sidewalk.