When I lived in West Virginia, I had the septic tank vacuumed out by John Goodman. It was just after Arachnophobia came out, and I wondered why he needed the work.
As he stood next to his humungous Vac Truk, sucking the worst of my labors out of the ground, he told me the story of the only time his Vac Truk ever let him down.
“Vienna Sausage can (he pronounced it vy-enne),” he said, as his hose glugged away. “I sucked up a gall dern Vienna Sausage can. Hell if I can figure how it got in a septic tank. I didn’t figger a feller could flush down something like that, but I sucked it up in the Vac Truk, and knew, sure as shootin’, something was bad wrong.”
He patted the Vac Truk lovingly with a hand which appeared more tanned than the rest of his body, while he continued his war story. “I had to take the suction hose and pump apart right there in the gravel driveway. There was a good bit of solids stuck up in the hose… and of course, that had to come out first… then I found it… a Vienna Sausage can! A gall dern Vienna Sausage can. Still had the label on it.”
So, this morning, as I vacuumed my floor, the pitch changed on the Kenmore, and I knew something bad wrong happened to the vacuum cleaner.
I thought back to Mr. Goodman in my West Virginia backyard, chewing the fat around the septic tank, and I decided to take the vacuum apart right there on the linoleum.
There was a lot of dog hair stuck up in the hose, so of course, that had to come out first. Then… a checker! A gall dern checker.
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