1950s SMALL TOWN LIFE: SEW-AGE

The fall air felt cool and crisp, filling our noses with the fresh scents of the chrysanthemums blooming in two small green plastic pots beside the back door. Jan and I were as excited as if we were heading for the State Fair in Dallas.

The white truck was already parked out back of the house and several men were jockeying large hoses into position behind the truck. They looked like hoses on the vacuum cleaner, only larger and longer. They took shovels from the truck interior and began digging in the hard gravel driveway.

After a few minutes, one of them got a pickaxe and attacked the hard ground, causing small chunks to fly up over their heads, shoot sideways, and occasionally hit them directly in the face, causing them to grimace and spit.

"That's hard, and dirty," I remarked to no one in particular, gazing out the screened door at the back of the house.

Our cousin Phil, who had come to stay the weekend, came down from the boys' bedroom upstairs, and stepped out of the stairwell that opened into the enclosed backporch where we stood.

"It's going to get harder and dirtier" he laughed, moving past us through the screened door and walking to a spot beyond where the men were digging. They didn't look at him-just kept working, chipping away at the packed gravel.

He leaned casually against a clothesline pole, observing them with an amused expression on his face.

Jan and I looked at each other, puzzled by his expression. We were waiting until someone besides the men were outside, but we wanted to go out. We didn't want to miss this, though we weren't sure what "this" was.

Susan, on the other hand, had said haughtily earlier "I want no part of the day's activities' I'm going to try to finish the book I'm reading, Charlotte's Web. It's so good. I have to return it to the library Monday anyway."

My dad had suggested to Mother that she take us elsewhere today while the men completed the work, but Mother thought it would be educational. We had all gone to see Bridge on the River Kwai last night at the drivein. "dahdah, dah dah dah dah dah dah; dahdah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah; dahdah; dah dah dah dah dah; dah dah dah dahdah dah dahdah dah dah."

The tune played incessantly in my head. I couldn't whistle, so I just sang it with the "dah, dah, dahs". Eventually, it got on my sisters' nerves the night before, and they told me rather rudely to stop "dah dahing". I just sang it quietly enough that they couldn't hear, but I really couldn't stop. They never seemed to understand that about me.

This morning, though, my obsessive singing was just background music that no one seemed to notice since the activity outside drowned it out. Shovels scraping loudly against the hard gravel, the vacuum motor on the truck surging, men grunting, sweating (though that didn't make any noise), the pinging of the pickaxe against the ground, and the men occasionally swearing, while Phil stood chuckling near the clothesline.

My dad was at work. He would not have allowed us to watch, hear the bad words the men were saying, or get near their work area. Mother was buried in clothing, sorting winter clothes in the large closet in their room, oblivious to the developing excitement outside.

One of the men yelled, "I think we've got it, boys.
Get the shovels and wedge them under the edge of the concrete lid."

All three of the men lined the flat edges of the shovels up in a straight row against something we couldn't see. Each placed one foot onto the top of the shovel blade and leaned hard on it, pressing down, their faces reddening with the effort. Two of them let out big puffs of air.

As we stared at the gravel driveway, it seemed to open up as the concrete lid was raised slowly, inch by inch, revealing the most disgusting green pool of vile slime I had ever seen. Still, we couldn't take our eyes off the event. Jan and I looked at each other, smiled awkwardly, then curled our top lips and flared our nostrils.

"Peeewww", I said. "That stinks!" I must have said it louder than I thought, for all three heads turned in unison in our direction, and the men grinned broadly.

Phil seemed more tickled by the minute, and he motioned for us to come outside. We shook our heads violently, my brown and her blonde ponytail swinging forcefully back and forth like horses swishing their tails to get rid of flies.

The men turned their attention to the concrete lid and managed to heave it off to the side by using a long metal bar for leverage. It looked like it could crush a child for sure. I didn't want to be there when they put it back on. Besides, what if it splashed the nasty slime on someone? I might throw up.

Phil motioned insistently to us, so eventually we pushed the door open ever so slowly and slithered out like snakes moving into the water. We passed at a very respectable distance from the green pond--now a new and unwelcome part of our back yard.

The sewage men were now focused on placing the pipes into the greenish- brown sludge, a color difference I had not wanted to note, but couldn't keep from seeing on my run past it.

We held our noses, running toward Phil, who still had a big grin on his face. As we reached him, he scooped Jan up with one big motion and took off running for the cesspool, tripping a little as he ran. He ran to the edge of the water, stopped abruptly, and swung Jan's tiny body out over the stinky brew, stopping my heart momentarily. It looked as if he would release his grip, but at the last second, he pulled her back, swung her around, and set her gingerly on the grass, laughing wildly.

At first, she looked like she would cry, but in only a few seconds, once she realized she was not hurt, she burst out laughing, then chased him around the yard, hitting him in the back while he whooped and chortleld, running in large circles, scarcely trying to elude her.

The men manning the large vacuum hoses looked on in amusement, seemingly unaware of the smell that now permeated the yard.

When we quietly asked later why they seemed to be immune to the odor, Phil whispered, "Their nose hairs have all been burned off. They can't smell."

He kept threatening to throw a match into the green water which he said would blow up, sending sewage all over Purdon. This made us uneasy each time he said it, but seemed to make him laugh crazily, his whole body shaking with the thought of it. "That'll be a big hit with the neighbors," he crowed. "No pun intended."

One summer, he and my brother Stephen had run about in the very dry grass of the large vacant lot between the neighbor's house and ours, striking matches and throwing them in the air behind them yelling, "We're firebugs, we're firebugs."

The fact that they set the grass on fire was upsetting enough, but add to that the specter of a 200 gallon butane tank, capable of blowing the entire town to smithereens (my mother's word), sitting on the edge of the lot, and one can see why, after putting out the fire, Mother set fire to Stephen and Phil's rear ends with a hairbrush.

"She doesn't even spank her own kids," Phil complained later to his mother. "But she spanked me."

"Well she did today, and you both deserved it," Aunt Beulah replied. "End of discussion."

Other than occasionallly moving the hoses, the men had little to do as the stuff was sucked into the tank of their truck, so they sat on the grass or leaned against the back of the tank truck. The green goo was barely visible now after several hours of their vacuuming, sucking, and moving the hoses from place to place. The whole operation was winding down, and we were ready to do something else.

"Hey, what are we going to do the rest of the day?" I whined.

"Um, play in the water with the hose?" Jan suggested helpfully.

"Got any matches?" Phil asked evilly, darting suddenly toward the house. After a few second delay, both of us raced after him, yelling at the top of our lungs, as the sewage men with their burned out noses laughed and stood up slowly to finish the job.

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