Grandma Henke

It was hard to tell this story without being gross and graphic … I even had a hard time coming up with an appropriate title.    Here’s why.

When the boys were in their late teens we had a Sharpei  dog named  Wigga.   One summer they decided to build him a super duper underground dog house behind our home where it was shady most of the time.     They dug a huge hole, about five foot deep and four foot square, lined it with black plastic to keep out the moisture, dragged lumber in there to reinforce it, then covered it with about a foot of dirt.   They worked hard on it for days and days and when they were finished, Wigga would not set foot in there.    They bribed him, they pushed him, they carried him … but he was scared to death of the dark and wouldn’t in it (or even go in it)  himself; so pretty much it was just an opening in the ground leading to this big reinforced hole.     

Since the super duper dog house was a dud they decided to use it as a quick and handy way to get rid of the dog poop they were supposed to clean up from the back yard each day.   Our Sharpei was a good sized dog with good sized poops … and over the course of a winter they almost managed to fill it up with dried doggy residue.     They were proud of themselves.    As it started to warm up in the summer and the odor attacked our bedroom window which was right above this elaborate animal outhouse, their dad went exploring and discovered the source of this horrific smell and told them they had to take take the top off the hole, take out the plastic and lumber, fill it all up with dirt, and make it level.  You’d think that would be the end of the story.    Not so.

Instead of doing it how he’d asked them to, they just threw shovels of dirt down the opening until they’d filled up the short tunnel leading into the larger hole.   It took care of the smell and it looked like it had been done right.      Then, a year later we had a “one in one hundred year” rain storm.

It rained steady and hard for weeks until the ground was so saturated the water was pooling everywhere.    One night about 2:00 in the morning we woke up to the sound of water gushing into our basement window.     The water had jumped the gutter in the street and had formed a little gully down the side of our house.    Where the boys had dug so much the previous year it had created a little hill which caused all that water to funnel directly into our window well.    

Lynn leaped out of bed, pulled on some old clothes and shoes, grabbed a shovel and ran around the back of the house to re-channel the water.    The sheets of rain were coming down so fast he could barely see where he was going.    He ran around the corner of the house, and in an instant was up to his armpits in soggy, smelly … you know what.  Because of the plastic lining they’d used, it was about like jumping feet first into a giant garbage sack of well preserved dog waste.     

After he rescued himself from this mud hole of dog sewage and had redirected the water away from our window well,  you can imagine how he looked, felt, and smelled when he pounded on our back door for help.   It was one of the rare occasions in my life when I was wise enough not to laugh.     (There would be plenty of time for that later and in the years to come.)    However,  I did make him strip down on the back lawn and stand outside in the pouring rain, butt naked, until every residue of brown was washed away.   

He said it was by far the “crappiest” experience of his life.   

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