Rikki's First Privy Dig
Hi, I'm Rikki,
Rick's 21 year old son from Seattle. With my father and uncle's permission, I am submitting this to the guest spot on their web page.
Before my father started talking about his new hobby, I had never thought much about the toilet. (Excluding the night of my last birthday) I just couldn't fathom the thought that there was
something interesting going on down inside the old porceline guy who humbly occupies about four square feet of my lavatory. But I was wrong. Now I know that there comes a time in every
mans life when the privy becomes a lot of work, sometimes even a painful journey. These two seem to enjoy the back-breaking work that faces them at the privy. Not only that, but they
seem to rather enjoy toiling at it. So there I am. It's my first privy dig, (I did not partake), and I'm standing in someone's back
yard whom I've never met before while some computer technicians in over-alls are removing layers of sod with the care of a mother holding an infant. "One of the goals is to leave the yard
looking like it was before you got there." they happily exclaim. That's nice, I thought as I tossed my empty Coke can and a couple of peices of cellophane from my cigarettes on the ground.
"That's how you get permissions. By having respect for their yards." "I would have never guessed. I thought asking the people who owned the property would do it," I commented. And then they started digging. As they went along, I started to pick up some of their lingo. Believe me, it wasn't easy, these guys have their own terms for everything.
"Right now, we're hoping to locate a layer of seed." My uncle says. I never knew people could coin such colorful terms for excrement. So here's a helpful key of terms that will
help those of you whom have never dug up a privy before.
Seed = dung
Treed = they see a bottle and are gently working it out of the ground Fluff it = to remove the loose soil in the hole with a smaller shovel Damn it = Dad didn't get to pick the first bottle again Shut up = Jason is getting mad at dad for teasing him about finding another Ketchup bottle Let's go = Dad has taken one shovel full of dirt from the ground and hasn't found a bottle yet Cough
Hack Wheeze = Jason has been digging for more than thirty seconds and needs a cigarette
Before I knew it, Jason had "Treed" a bottle. He dug it out and handed it to me. "That's a nice amber beer," I commented, grinning at my new found vocabulary. "Cough Hack Wheeze," Jason replied. Then Dad jumped in the hole and started to dig. It wasn't long before he had four more "Treed". I took a quick jog back to the house to get a drink. Nothing had prepared me for what I was about to see when I came back. I noticed both Dad and Jason standing over the hole, looking down. I went and peeked in the hole and was amazed at what I was seeing.
"That's incredible!" I exclaimed. It appeared the two had unearthed some kind of skeleton and had made an attempt to piece it together.
"It must have been some sort of sickly buzzard-monster! How did you guys piece it together that fast?" "Rikki, stop teasing your Grandfather," my dad scolded.
"Oh, sorry" Grandpa dug in the hole for awhile, and then offered his theory on how this hole could have been the privy belonging to the great Moore conquerer, Othello.
"Didn't he live in Italy?" Jason commented. "Wasn't that over 4000 years ago?" I added. "I believe he was a fictitious character." my dad replied.
Grandpa thought for a moment, and then agreed with us all. Then he decided to go home and make a sandwich. In the end, they pulled out several nice beers, some sort of old porcelain doll, Grandpa, some
old broken china with Japanese writing on the bottom, a medicine or two, and a hell of a lot of dirt. "Now it's time to fill in the hole," they said.
The weirdest part of they day was yet to come, the ritual that they would call "The Dance." After about 10 shovels full of dirt were tossed back into the hole, Jason looked at my dad
and said, "It's time for the dance." What followed was almost undescribable. The dance consists of one of them jumping into the hole to pack the dirt down tight. I'm not sure
if this ritual is necessary or even legal. To the best of my description, it resembled some sort of pagan moon dance that looked like a cross between an angry sqwauking chicken entangled
in a barbed-wire fence and the walk a cat does when you stick scotch tape to the bottom of his paws. But in the end, it was kind of an enjoyable experience.
"Maybe next time I'm back east, I'll go privy digging with you," I said. "We'll scope out a good hole and have it ready for you," Dad excitedly replied.
"Cough Hack Wheeze," Jason commented. RLB
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