On Wednesday, after a long day of working and following my commute from Presque Isle to Fort Kent, I arrived at my home to find a uniquely disgusting surprise waiting for me.
At some point during the day, a vehicle dropped a garbage bag of what appeared to be the contents from a well-used portable latrine. This plastic bag apparently fell from the vehicle and slid about 50 feet down Highway 1 before ripping open and scattering its contents across the macadam for another 50 feet in front of my home. It was, literally, five inches deep in some places.
The contents, probably a few hundred pounds, would have made a goat vomit, and I will leave it at that.
It was also apparent that many cars across the afternoon had managed to veer into the opposite lane and avoid the main part of the pile of muck. However, based on the tracks some vehicles left behind, there are several folks out there that should probably take their cars to the car wash.
Soon.
When my wife came home around 5:30 p.m., about an hour before I arrived, she immediately called the police, fearing the smell from the unidentifiable mound might mean something fatal and nefarious had occurred.
They said an officer would check out the mess.
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By the time I pulled into the driveway, she had learned from the Fort Kent dispatcher that the Maine Department of Transportation takes care of these sorts of things, and would probably send someone out by the next day.
The stench was bad, and that is an understatement for a hot and unseasonably humid afternoon. I was also concerned about more cars driving through the mess across the night. We decided to start working the problem ourselves. Sofia grabbed a heavy duty plastic garbage bag while I wielded a shovel to take care of the raw sewage.
In one way, the experience was a bonding event that strengthened our marriage and commitment to support each other as fellow human beings and helpmates. In another way, it was like we had suddenly found ourselves on a medieval pig farm working on a broken honey wagon. We bagged up about 70 pounds of the hot mess, but what remained was still an awful (offal?) problem.
Then MDOT showed up. Do you remember when you watched the movie, “Arachnophobia,” how relieved you felt when John Goodman’s exterminator character showed up? It was exactly like that.
The MDOT guy explained he had been on his way home to Van Buren when he received the call. He turned around and was at our house around 7 p.m.
He was competent, confident, friendly and understanding, and he obviously knew how to handle the problem. He assessed the situation and agreed it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen, except, perhaps, for a particularly memorable roadkill situation involving the carcass of a large unidentifiable animal well along the decomposition process.
The man called for help, and soon a large tank of water, mounted to the bed of a utility truck, showed up with a second MDOT fellow.
The men spent about two hours cleaning the area in front of my house, hosing down that portion of road with an astonishing amount of water. When they finished, I thanked them with a grateful heart and a less distressed nose, and off they went to continue their own journey home.
As I walked from the end of my driveway towards my house, I realized that I had just experienced my tax dollars in action, and I felt proud to be a Maine taxpayer. I had also seen a part of the Maine’s civil service respond with a level of professional good nature that is a testament to the Maine Department of Transportation.
These folks absolutely rock.