Saturday morning I was walking down the driveway to the mailbox when an unfamiliar car pulled into the driveway. I’m not especially thrilled when I find unfamiliar cars in my driveway. When the driver stepped out of the car, he made his first error in judgment. And that was making small talk with me instead of explaining why he was in my driveway. He pointed to all of the trees that are laying near the driveway. Anyone with any kind of intelligence wouldn’t ask me about those trees. But, this is what he said “Those come down in the storm?” The storm of just a few weeks ago. I deadpanned, “the one last year”. Because as embarrassing as it is that we still have tons of trees laying in our WOODS, it is even more embarrassing that he couldn’t tell old dead trees from 3 week-old dead trees. Please, why waste my time? Turns out he was a Jehovah’s Witness. I sent him packing in about 3 seconds and then continued walking down the driveway.
We spent most of Saturday sawing down lots and lots of poplar trees out of our drain field. When we moved into the house all those years ago we didn’t even know where our drain field was. Then one fateful day in August of 1998, I was standing down in the garage and noticed cat poop on the washer and dryer.
Let me say that my cats (at the time we had two) are legendary with not hitting the litter box every single time. It was and is impossible for them to poop on the washer and dryer since the machines are (curses) in the garage and the door to the garage is almost always closed. To make a long story short, our septic tank was full and the scoop o’ poop that I flushed came back out of the pipe in the garage which is handily right over the washer and dryer.
We got the tank uncovered, pumped and in the process found where our drain field is. We also had to replace some pipe heading out to the distribution box because instead of PVC it was that black corrugated stuff you use at the end of your downspouts to take water away from your house. I think the county building inspectors back in the 1970s were stoned all the time. There can be no other explanation of why that particular piece should have passed inspection.
When all of that work was going on, the backhoe man knocked down the small to medium sized poplar trees that were growing in the drain field. We piled the tree trunks and leaves right along the property line with our nasty neighbors. This time around we stacked the debris away from the line since we don’t find our current neighbors to be half as nasty. They at least speak when spoken to and they give a darn about keeping their property in shape.
When we were done with all of the cutting, hauling and stacking, I listened to a voice message from my sister. She wanted to borrow our truck to take some brush to the landfill. I just laughed since we had just finished with all kinds of debris hauling.