Another Poop Sheet

Georgetown, Texas


I've gotten into exotic dumping.

Let me explain.

Right now I'm camped out in the driveway of my empty house. It's for sale. I'm pretty comfortable. As a campsite it ain't bad, in the shade of the big elms, with the birds waking me up in the morning. There's 30A power, a laundry, and a shower just steps away. I'm getting a lot of reading done.

Of course there's the dark side. The neighbors probably think I'm weird, which is really nothing new. A family of squirrels use the top of the trailer for a racetrack.

I still have to mow the yard.

And every week or so, I have to hook up and drag myself to the COE camp outside of town, to dump my tanks. It takes a couple of hours. Four bucks. What a pain. I've been in the driveway for 6 months. After 2, I was looking around for a better place to dump.

I've heard that success is based on sweat and hard work. Au Contraire, mon ami. Laziness is the real generator of progress and innovation.

Of course we all learn to celebrate the gifts that are native to us.

The sewer cutout plug on the house is inaccessible to the trailer. I could get a macerator, but those things are not only expensive, but require a lot of water to pump the effluent through fifty feet of hose. On the road they'd be useless.

Those little blue tanks on wheels are a possibility, but they're bulky and goofy looking, and where would I store it?

While I was walking around the block one day, chewing over the possibilities, I began to notice all the big circular iron plates marked "Sewer". Hmmmm. One almost every block. There's two kinds, "Storm Sewer" and "Sanitary Sewer". Better stick with the latter. Duh. How hard would it be to pry up one of those things?

They're about 2 feet across, and heavy cast iron. I tried to get one up with a large screwdriver, and almost lost a finger to Science. So then I went down to Lowe's, and found a 3 foot "wrecking bar". Perfect. The lid came up easily, and I dragged it aside. Maybe 10 feet down there in the darkness I heard running water.

Whew! No doubt about it, I'm in the right place.

Once you become aware of them, these dumps du jour are everywhere. Even eliminating the ones that are in someone's yard, or in places where you'd have to block traffic to line up the trailer, there's plenty of them accessible. I found three likely sites within a 6 or 7 block radius. One is at the edge of the street, in the gutter really, at the property line between two houses. Another in the no man's land at the front of a subdivision. And another in a similar place at the front of a large apartment complex.

So, for the last month, it has taken me right at 30 minutes to dump, from the time I decide to do it till the time I'm parked again at the house, trailer leveled, antenna extended, and my lazy butt safely back on the couch.

I dunno if this is legal. There's nothing that's not illegal somewhere, including motherhood. Maybe even apple pie. But for me, dumping sewage into the sewer passes the ...ah... sniff test.

Would I do it on the road? In a strange town? Could be, in the absence of a proper dump. It only takes minutes, and harms no one. Maybe I would. But you'll never know about it.

And it sure beats the blue tanks.


Bob

Flatspotting At The Dam

Georgetown, Tx.


On Sunday evening I grabbed a small cigar from my illicit and dwindling hoard and headed out to the dam at Lake Georgetown, above Cedar Breaks Park. As I arrived, the sun was a turbulent red ball hanging just a hair above the jumbled horizon of hills.

Perfect.

The park itself is closed to visitors at sunset, which I find darned inconvenient. But I know a secret place. It is hidden in plain sight at the top of the dam, but no one else seems to notice it. Just on the right as you climb up from the south to cross, there is a triangle of pavement with room for 2 or 3 cars, in front of a locked gate to nowhere.

At the apex of this triangle, behind the barricade, there is a gap just wide enough to admit a pickup. It is the highest flat spot around, and offers an unobstructed view of the changing light on the lake.

I have been there many times, and have begun to think of it in proprietary terms. All it needs are a few small tasteful signs, like "Bob Parking Only", or "If you be not Bob, be Gone".

But of course there is no such thing.

A pity, for when I pulled up this evening there was an empty convertible back by the gate. First time that's happened. I stopped uncertainly in the middle of the empty road, shocked. I quickly considered my options. The sun would not wait. There wasn't any other place to park up there, unless I wanted to look through a fence. And there was still plenty of room to squeeze in, though not without becoming the stopper in a bottle.

On the other hand, if they're off stomping around down in that oak and juniper thicket, they might not be back until well after both sun and cigar were ashes. I could always move. I wasn't going anywhere else.

I looked back at the convertible again, and at that moment a pert blonde head appeared, just above the passenger door. Uh oh. In the failing light all I could see of her face was a dim white oval, but there was no doubt she was looking right at me.

I have received that exact same quivering upright fierce appraisal from a prairie dog - perhaps willing to cede the power to stay, but not the right.

Now added to my irritation at the usurpation was the sense of being a skulking trespasser. But she certainly had the pride of place, along with that other whose presence was palpable but unseen on the driver's side. So I let off the brake and slowly moved across the dam, considering the unwrapped cigar on the dash.

La Gloria Cubana. It wouldn't do to smoke it without a sunset.

Then I remembered a trail on the north side, down to the city pump station. Maybe there.

It wasn't the same. Lower, and nowhere to sit. Nonetheless I squatted on the bluff and watched the finale, as sky and lake progressed from crayon colors to pastels to daguerreotype, and finally to a glass plate negative.

There the solid surface of the water glows, like a flat rock in the moonlight, and the rocky shore beyond is a deep absence, dark and enigmatic.

That's what happens in the night. Every night. The world turns upside down.

No doubt the lovers up above are no longer watching. Their eyes turn inward. But they came here with the right idea. They came to share.

I came only for myself. That was a sin. I hope they are still there, and have forgotten me. I wish them well.

For it is clear to me they own the night.

The rest of us are renters.


Bob