Culverts

It's amazing the things you have to do before you can do the things you want to do. Part of my building projects over the next several years will involve concrete trucks. Concrete trucks are heavy, and can't jump ditches. I don't want a concrete truck in my front yard, not because they'll damage the grass, but because they might collapse the sewerage line. Collapsing the sewerage line is a bad thing.

I live on a parish road, and the ditch, technically, belongs to the parish. You need the parish's permission to put in a culvert. So, I called the parish. They sent a fellow (nice guy!) out who looked at the spot I want to culvert, took some measurements, consulted his notes, and told me I need a 15 inch culvert. It I buy the culvert, the parish will install it in their ditch.

"What type culvert should I buy?" I asked him.

"Doesn't matter to us." he replied. "Just get a culvert, then call us back. We'll come out here and install it."

You ever tried to find a culvert when you wanted to buy one? Ha! Lowe's doesn't carry them. None of the building materials places I called had a culvert. I found exactly one concrete company that has culvert, but they must be made of gold. The tariff was entirely too steep. Extravagant. I just want a damn tinhorn culvert. Every redneck in the world has driven his truck off the end of a tinhorn culvert. Some stalwart individuals have tried to drive in to a tinhorn culvert, usually with disastrous results. The Deep South, and most of Texas, has a tinhorn culvert every hundred feet or so. There are millions of them in use, but no one sells the damn things. They must appear as if by magic.

Milady heard me muttering and recalled a Feed and Seed store that had a bunch of culvert stacked up near the highway. The only place in the parish that sells them, evidently. I called them and they sold me a tinhorn culvert. It's 20 feet long and heavy. They loaded it with a forklift into my trailer. Now I have to get that summbitch out of the trailer and on to the ground. Some rope, a stout tree, and my daughter at the wheel of the truck. Sounds like a plan.

What could possibly go wrong? Here! Hold my beer.