Would anyone like to hear his advice on crapshoots?
Its funny you should say that, I'm not connected to the main sewer, all my toilet waste goes into a septic tank.
It works like this, a large fibreglass container, shaped like a decanter and capable of holding 2000 gallons or so is buried beneath the ground and all toilet waste, liquid and solid, is piped into it. The solids sink to the bottom, and the liquid runs off through underground filters, this system works without maintenance until after about two years, the solid waste reaches the top of the tank, you know when this has occurred because suddenly, things start to get very smelly, I found myself in this situation last week
The remedy is simple, just pick up the phone and call Peggy Shitter, AKA Lang Wet Waste. I dont know who christened him Peggy Shitter, but that was the name given to me to me by a friend who scribbled a telephone number on a scrap of paper, the first time I called him I said to the lady who answered the phone, "Hello, is Mr Shitter there?"
By now we were old hands at tank emptying, this would be out third visit from Albert, as we now know him, (although he does answer to Peggy) and we waited patiently, noses wrinkled, for the sound of his tanker coming down the lane, bang on time as always, he arrived
Peggys vehicle is built on the same lines as a milk or petrol tanker, but there the similarity ends, the huge tank is festooned with valves and pipes, I think it was blue once, but any remaining paintwork is now invisible under many years worth of indescribable filth.
Albert himself is also covered in many years worth of filth, he must be immune to every disease known to man, Mrs Red makes him a cup of tea (she always smashes the cup afterwards) and he sits on the step, opens his sandwiches, and eats them with unwashed hands that are covered with brown stains, although he does stop to shake off the odd bit of used toilet paper
Breakfast over, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, passes the cup back to Mrs Red, (who holds it at arms length like an unexploded bomb) walks over to the septic tank and lifts the lid. I dont know why, but all the family, including me, have a morbid fascination with the contents of that tank, and my daughters, Mrs Red and I all stood around in a semi circle, craning our necks and trying to look inside, at once both mesmerised and horrified. Meanwhile Peggy strolls back to his truck and begins to unroll a long flexible hose, like a firemans hose but thicker and semi rigid, connects one end to a big valve on his truck and then works the other end deep into the shyou know what, then he starts his engine, opens the valve, and the hose starts to empty the tank like a kid with a straw emptys chocolate milk shake
All was going according to plan, and as we cast furtive glances into the tank, Peggy regaled us with tales of days gone by, when this job was done by brave men who actually climbed into the tank and shovelled the stuff out, night soil they called it, and it was transported by horse and cart to local fields where it was spread on the crops
Suddenly Peggys history lesson was interrupted when the note of the engine changed, and the hose started to squirm about like a constipated snake, "Blockage" cried Peggy, and he quickly turned the big valve to the off position. "What now?" I asked, intrigued by this new turn of events, "Ill soon sort it" Peggy replied, and with that he pulled the hose from the heaving brown mass and holding it about an inch from his face, peered into it. "Cant see anything" he told me, "Ill have to get my rootler" His rootler turned out to be a long stainless steel rod with a sort of corkscrew attachment on one end, and he pushed it carefully into the hose, probing gently. About four feet in, the rootler came into contact with something solid, "Aha!" exclaimed Peggy, "there it is" Peggy spent the next twenty minutes poking, teasing, ramming and swearing at the blockage, but it wouldnt budge. "Right!" he cried, flinging the end of the hose back in to the tank and squaring his scrawny shoulders, "We'll blow the bugger out" He moved a lever on the back of the truck, and when he opened the valve again, it was set to blow instead of suck.
With hindsight, this was the point in the proceedings when the family McCready should have left Mr Shitter to do his job in peace, but it was far to interesting for that and, hands holding noses and eyes narrowed to slits, we shuffled ever closed to the action. The hose had now become a live thing, it rumbled and hissed and as the pressure inside it built up it writhed and arched its back as though in great pain. "Hmm" mused Peggy, thoughtfully stroking his chin with his germ-laden fingers, "This is a toughie, Ill just rev her up a bit" With that, he went back to the truck and opened the throttle.
What happened next will be imprinted in my mind in glorious, frame-by-frame, graphic Technicolor detail forever. The hose seemed to swell to twice its size and instead of lying on the ground, it rose up in a series of arches like the Loch Ness monster, then, with a bang like a cannon going off, the blockage came free and shot out into the septic tank with the force of a small meteorite, followed by about 90,000 pounds of evil smelling compressed air. As you can imagine, the resulting splash back was spectacular, I wasnt around when Vesuvius blew her top, but I now have a good idea what it looked like. Everyone was liberally coated with two years worth of night soil and soggy bog paper, we looked like we had been tarred and feathered
Mrs Red was the first to laugh, but soon we were all rolling about on the floor, even Peggy Shitter had to smile. The cause of the blockage turned out to be a cricket ball, how that got in there we will never know, Ive eaten some strange things in my time, but I draw the line at sports equipment
So that was the biggest crapshoot Im ever likely to see, and my advice is,
RUN AWAY!!