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Come to find out that when you live as far out in the country as I do, when you flush your toilet, the "stuff" gets directed out into a big storage tank buried in your yard somewhere and never actually leaves the property. Really, I'm not kidding you…it seems there are no pipes connecting my toilet to the rest of the city!
I truly believe that this latest realization is probably one of the worst consequences of my divorce. Losing a beautiful home, my nice car and the opportunity to stay home with the kids, is nothing compared to the nightmare of a sewage filled bathtub.
Unlike those living in the modern world, us underdeveloped backwoods folks use something called a "Septic system". This system consist of the afore mentioned tank where the waste sits around and ferments a bit, allowing bacteria to do its job of breaking the waste down into water and carbon dioxide.
As the tank fills, this "water" spills over into another section of the tank and is directed out into the yard through a set of distribution pipes with tiny holes drilled in them so the "water" can weep out and seep down into the ground filtering out impurities as it travels deeper into the earth. This unholy of places is called a leech field. You can Google it if you don't believe me.
Anyway, this place where my children run and play and the family gets together for barbecues has been home to more than eighty years of accumulated crap and it finally decided to back up into my bathtub. Aahhhhhh!!
I also do not have city water and must suck it up through a well and can't help but think that perhaps some of this "water" was once already inside of me. This whole country living thing is really grossing me out.
I have my ex to thank for this and his little troll of a lawyer, but I've gotten ahead of my self a little bit.
This morning, as I was heading into the office, I noticed a distinct and very unpleasant odor coming from the bathroom. I won't describe what I found in the tub but it wasn't pretty. I ran outside to get some fresh air and was smacked in the face with a similar odor. I followed my nose around to the back of the house and spotted small pools of dark, oily looking water seeping up from the ground…SEWAGE.
Now country neighbors are much more in tune with what's going on around them than us city folk are. And even though the houses out here are so far apart it takes a set of binoculars to keep abreast of things, farmer Tom was already on the case, inspecting my situation and developing a course of action…uninvited though it was.
He told me that it looked like I needed to pump out my septic tank and after explaining to me just exactly what a septic tank was and what pumping one out entailed, I told him I was in no way prepared to do this, and that I had dealt with enough crap for one year.
He laughed his country little laugh and told me that there are companies out there that "specialize" in these matters and they would pump it out for me. He said it was necessary to do this every couple of years, especially on an older system like mine, and what with all the rain we've been having the yard was probably saturated and not draining fast enough.
I told him that figures because when I used to have a beautiful lawn that needed the rain, it never would and I spent a fortune on my water bill…my fresh, clean chlorinated water.
He looked as though he understood my frustration and said he could get me the name of a good qualified septic man, the same guy he used in fact.
I don't know what qualifies or motivates a person to want to specialize in sewage, but I told him I would appreciate the connection. As most good ol' boys do, he kept his word and met me at my door when I returned home from work. He gave me a card with a name and number and funny little picture of a cartoon character sucking up sewage…somebody had put an awful lot of thought into that card!
As fate would have it the last name on the card was the same as my ex-husband's lawyer's last name, which I thought was fitting and told my neighbor that if his man was half as good at sucking up crap as my ex's lawyer was at dishing it out, then he was definitely the guy I wanted on the case.
My neighbor nodded good day and probably wondered why a city girl such as my self would want to live way out here at the edge of civilization. I know why. Even though I have to pinch my nose and close my eyes to drink a glass of water and run the very real risk of getting diphtheria, I feel safe. In fact, aside fro the creepiness of it all, I can honestly say that I've never been kept as close an eye on as I am out here in the middle of nowhere.
For more from the mind of Myla Madson, go to: Myla Madson.com
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