Friday, August 26, 2005

The Case Of The Sinking Truck (Plus Some New Pictures)









"So the cops have finally come for Jim?" That's the first thought that you had wasn't it? Actually, the officer is there because the truck that you see was trying to remove a dumpster from the house across the street and crashed into the telephone utility box and my fence. The front wheel of the truck also sunk deep into the soft ground. And, how was your morning?

Some background: I was out of town from last Thursday until this Wednesday. On Friday, while I was away, the neighbors across the street had a large dumpster brought in (the big blue thing you see being dragged down the street in the last photo). When delivering the dumpster, the driver managed to snap the cable TV line into my house. The driver called the cable company on Friday but it was still down when I got back late Wednesday afternoon. I called the cable company and was told that it might be a day or so until they could get to it. I suggested that they either put it back up or come and take it down permanently and I would get a dish. It was back up about a hour later.

So today, Friday of this week, the dumpster folks came back to get their dumpster, now full. The lot on that side of me is an abandoned tennis court. People tend to treat it as if it were public property although it belongs to the family in the next house. The driver of the dumpster-retrieval truck was not watching what he was doing, I guess, and pulled forward into the tennis-court lot and hit my fence and the telephone thing. Oddly enough, my phone (which you might recall only rings in my bathroom) is still working. The other nearby neighbors are not as lucky and their phone are out.

So now, and I'm not making this up, I waiting for the "landscape guy" from the dumpster company to show and and put that little corner of my yard back together.

And, yes, you're right, the first thing that crossed my mind was "How are we going to get to McDonald's?" Anticipating my dilemma, one of the neighbors on the other side of the blocked street called and offered to go to McDonald's for me and bring my two plain cheeseburgers and ex-large Coke back home. I said that I would wait, after all, I want to tell our friends at McDonald's all about this myself.

ps. telephone box split open, rain coming, that should pretty well wipe out phone service for the whole street

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