The Bermuda Triangle of Socks & The Poop Truck

Two socks enter the washer but only one comes out, never to be seen again.

Fortunately Ole wears the white crew socks made by Hanes with the red lettering across the bottom of the toe. So when a sock goes MIA, its leftover mate has to find solace with the loner that’s already in the drawer. After this has happened frequently enough I have to go out and buy Ole some more socks.

Now where do you suppose those MIA socks go? There are a lot of theories out there – the Bermuda Triangle of Missing Socks is definitely one. They’re sucked into the black hole of Sockland to enjoy the remainder of their life not being tramped on by some person or stuck into a big boot for the day where they can’t breathe not only due to tight conditions, but can you imagine the foot odor down there?

Maybe it’s the sock company’s marketing ploy. Every other sock is made from a type of fabric that’s designed to dissolve when put into the dryer. If we didn’t have this problem who would buy so many socks so damn often?

Then again, maybe they flip over the side of the washing machine tub during the spin cycle, worm their way down the drain, and in our case into the septic tank. Ha! Fooled them – there’s no escape from the septic tank until it gets pumped. (I have another story to tell you about THAT). Possibly they thought they were city socks and would go down the sewer pipe and eventually reach the ocean where they could work their way to some sandy beach and lay in the sun to get bleached perfectly white again. That is if some octopus or giant squid that was collecting socks for all their tentacles didn’t accost them.
Anyway, solving that mystery is just too much for my brain today. Just in case you’re wondering I’ve been doing laundry and Ole’s missing more socks.

Now, on to the septic tank story. This might be an information overload for you so if you’re easily offended you may want to stop reading. If you like a good chuckle – keep on.

I have a cousin who used to run a septic tank pumping business. Now this cousin has a really warped sense of humor, but he is so very funny. He called his truck The Poop Truck, and on the side he had painted “Your shit is my bread and butter.”

When you run a business like that you are kind of on call 24 hours a day. If someone runs into trouble, which frequently happens in the winter, you need to go to their rescue right away so they can get their system up and running again before everything freezes up. Can you imagine trying to thaw out a 2000-gallon septic tank? It’s not easy.

So late one winter afternoon he got a panicky call from a local resident (an elderly bachelor) whose tank was full and could he come out and do the job. And of course, he did. Back in those days you could empty The Poop Truck out in a farmer’s field if you had permission from the farmer. So Cousin was out in the field, spraying the contents into the air. It was a cold evening so he was sitting inside the truck waiting for the contents to empty. When it did, he went to the back of the truck to clean the hoses and put things away when he happened to glance up into the trees. There, covering the trees like Christmas balls was an array of brightly colored condoms swaying in the breeze! They remained there for the winter, easily viewed from the road that went by, until the trees got their leaves in the spring. I guess he received a lot of questions about where that load came from, but he respected his customer’s privacy and only snickered when the question came up.