The Tale of the Poop Truck

 

Another day, another foot of water.  Actually, the river has gone up about 2 feet in the last 24 hours.  Here’s a shot taken out our back door.

The driveway hasn’t improved at all as the culverts still aren’t open.  Now we’ve got snow and ice added to the conglomeration.  But at least we can still get through it – so far.  In previous years we’ve had 3 feet of water covering the entire driveway all the way up to the house. 

Ole and I took our nightly run with Daisy last night about 5 o’clock.  The water is beginning to cover the township roads, so that’s going to make travel difficult in the near future.  The good thing that we saw was that under the Old Church Bridge (those of you who live around here will know where I’m talking about) the ice was broken up and the water was BOILING under the bridge.  So that means the water is actually moving along, although there’s still enough coming into the main stem that the levels are still rising.  I did hear from my good friend upstream about 6 miles that the water level dropped at his house about 4 inches over night.  So that’s encouraging.

At this point it’s just a matter of watching and waiting – and that’s the part that gets so nerve wracking.  There is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent the rise – you just have to sit there and watch. 

So instead of dwelling on all this gloom and doom – let’s talk about something more fun, okay?

Now, this is a true story and might be an information overload for you,  so if you’re easily offended you may want to stop reading. If you like a good chuckle – keep on.

I have a cousin who used to run a septic tank pumping business. Now this cousin has a rather warped sense of humor, but he is so very funny. He called his truck The Poop Truck, and on the side he had painted “Your shit is my bread and butter.”

When you run a business like that you are kind of on call 24 hours a day. If someone runs into trouble, which frequently happens in the winter, you need to go to their rescue right away so they can get their system up and running again before everything freezes up. Can you imagine trying to thaw out a 2000-gallon septic tank? It’s not easy.

So late one winter afternoon he got a panicky call from a local resident (an elderly bachelor) whose tank was full and could he come out and do the job. And of course, he did. Back in those days you could empty The Poop Truck out in a farmer’s field if you had permission from the farmer. So Cousin was out in the field, spraying the contents into the air. It was a cold evening so he was sitting inside the truck waiting for the contents to empty. When it did, he went to the back of the truck to clean the hoses and put things away when he happened to glance up into the trees. There, covering the trees like Christmas balls was an array of neon-colored condoms swaying in the breeze! They remained there for the winter, easily viewed from the road that went by, until the trees got their leaves in the spring.

I guess he received a lot of questions about where that load came from, but he respected his customer’s privacy and only snickered when the question came up.

The sun is shining today – so smile.

Love, Lena

PS:  There’s a new addition over there to the right under Norwegian Humor.  Go get a chuckle – okay?