It was that time again. Another two years had come and gone. This spring not only meant the greening of the trees and the blooming of the flowers. It also reminded me that it was time to empty the septic tank.
As I've done every other time over the past decade and a half, I called my septic tank cleaning man. The funny little phrases on the side of his truck always made me chuckle in the knowledge that they made what he did for a living a little more bearable. But to my dismay, I found that my septic tank cleaner man had cleaned out his last tank over six months ago and had died.
After feeling a few minutes of sadness, I called the next septic tank cleaner that appeared in the phone book. The secretary told me that there would be no problem, and they could send the truck over first thing in the morning. All I had to do was stake the septic tank location, and the engineer (engineer?) would take care of the rest.
"Stake off where my septic tank is?"
My question to the secretary created a few minutes of silence. "Yes, all you have to do is place a stake over the area of your yard where the septic tank sits."
Not wanting to sound like a total moron, I simply agreed and hung up the phone.
With measuring tape in hand, I told my wife to keep my coffee warm because finding the septic tank shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
Measuring the distance from the foundation, I preceded to dig my first hole. I was convinced I'd found the right spot. I even laughed at myself, thinking how panicked I felt when I learned that I had to find my own tank.
Two and a half hours later, I finished digging my 25th hole. A gopher should hope to dig as many holes as I did that afternoon. The holes ranged in depth from four feet to half way to China. I ended up digging a trench around the corner of my house hoping to at least find the pipe that led to the now obviously invisible tank.
I couldn't even find the pipe. Did my septic tank exist? And if it did, was it 10 or 12 feet down into the earth. A couple of times I thought I found the tank. As I was lying face down in the dirt with my head stuck in one of my many holes, I could hear my shovel hit something hard. "Yes!" , I screamed, thinking that my task was finally complete.
I began to dig furiously, only to find that I had severed another root that let to my soon-to-be-dying blue spruce.
My wife screamed from the top of the porch to see if I was still alive. From her angle, it looked as if I'd died and fallen head first into one of my many holes. Sweat poured over my glasses as I tried to scrape out the dirt, which I prayed covered the lost tank.
After my third hour of digging, I decided to surrender and call the man who had originally built my house. Maybe he could remember where the tank was. The conversation I had with him must have sounded stranger than the digging itself. He couldn't understand how, after living in the house for over 12 years, I had no idea where the tank was.
"You had the right idea," he chuckled, trying not to embarrass me too much, "but you went in the wrong direction.
He then proceeded to push a long pole that he had brought with him into the ground in an opposite direction from the holes I had dug. Within minutes he found the tank, and thanked me for making his weekend.
I can't say for certain, but I though I heard him roar with laughter as he was backing his truck out of my driveway.
It 's been a few weeks since the search for my septic tank occurred. But now that I have a map in my desk drawer designating its location, I know the recent events will never occur again. Or did I place the map in one of the kitchen drawers?
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Last Updated: Feb 18, 1996