This happened years ago when I was an cable TV installer. Sometime in the early 1980's when CATV was initially being installed. I was in the bad section of town and when I came up to the house I noticed a bit of an odor. They showed me where they wanted the tv and I told them that it would work out best if I could bring the cable through the basement.
They said that I probably wouldn't want to go down there, but I insisted that it would make the job a lot easier for me if I could route it that way. I opened the door to go down and I found the source of the odor - about a foot and half of raw sewage was down there. Pipe must have broke months before and was never fixed.
Becky was helping me and we actually figured a way to get the cable through the basement - using a landing and piece of furniture to get the cable up through the floor. Not a pleasant job, but we managed.
As we were winding down the install, we found out about at least part of the problem of that household. The phone rang and a young teenage daughter answered. When she got finished, she hung up and announced to her mother, "It's the VA again, Daddy got drunk again last night and they took him there."
I could not fathom how the family could live there like that. Felt sorry for the kids - they seemed to take the situation as normal.
