Stupidity at the Septic Tank 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
y Dad had purchased a mobile home trailer to put next to our house to rent. With the trailer, the seller had included the septic tank, but we would have to dig it up and move it.
Well, digging it up and draining most of the "stuff" out of it was no problem for 6 guys and a honey dipper truck. The problem was getting the 8' round by 8' deep tank out of the ground.
We all circled the thing coming up with various ideas on how to extract it from the hole.
Finally someone (I think it was my Dad) came up with the idea of running a logging chain through the inlet and outlet pipes at the top of the tank, and securing the loose ends to the front bumper of the sellers Jeep. This didn't work because the tank was about 12" below the surface of the ground and was not moving at all. Just bending.
It was then decided that what we needed was something we could put under the chain to act as a fulcrum for our extraction. An 8' long railroad tie was enlisted into service.
We stood the tie up on end at about a 30 degree angle, put the chain over the top and attached it to the Jeep. Tension was applied to the chain as the Jeep slowly backed up. When it looked like the tie would stay, we let go and assumed our positions around the perimeter of the hole, looking down into the tank and encouraging the Jeep driver to keep backing up, assuring him we would stop him before the tie flipped over backwards and landed on his Jeep.
The septic tank slowly made its way up out of the earth and was about 2/3rds out when the tie slipped sideways. Tension was immediately lost on the chain and back into the hole it slid. Surprisingly quickly too.
We all were watching intently waiting for the thing to bottom out so we could try again when all of a sudden it hit bottom with a solid whump. About 50 cubic feet of "stuff" that the honeydipper truck was unable to suck out came straight up like a depth charge explosion in an old war movie. We 5 idiots who were standing around watching with our mouths agape were totally stunned to have this much yuck hit us this fast. We were covered! In hair, mouths, back pockets, everywhere! And stink? Like you can not even imagine. The Jeep driver was the only one not directly hit. But he saw us through the now covered windshield and took to laughing so hard he fell down as soon as he got out. The rest of us thought that was the most hilarious thing that we'd ever seen.
The wise wives who had been warning us of impending doom all day came out of their safe houses laughing so hard they were crying. They eventually, after many MANY I-told-you-so's, sprayed us off with the hose.
We tried again after an hour or so of being hosed off with much better results. Submitted on 08/19/2002
Submitted by:
Joseph Lowe
Reference:
y own memory circa 1966
Copyright © 2002 DarwinAwards.com
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