Royal Flush

 In all my sixty nine years on this earth, I've never lived anywhere that had a septic system until we moved to Wasilla last year. I've lived on an end-time farm where we crapped in a fifty five gallon barrel and some unfortunate shmuck had to haul it away on a heavy metal sled driven by horses or tractor. Sometimes that schmuck was me. Not my favorite job. When I was in the navy, all the toilets flushed right into the very water that the ship was floating in. Fortunately the crap sank, unless someone had been eating a lot of really greasy food, but I don't even want to think about that. Everywhere else I lived, Ohio, Key West, Charleston, Hoonah, you went in, sat on the toilet, got relief and flushed all your troubles away, never to be seen or thought about again. However, in Wasilla, its a different story. I believe if you live in the city proper, you have a sewer system that flows through pipes and ultimately to a building where it's dealt with. However, we live on the outskirts of town in a different part of the Matanuska Susitna Borough. The Mat-Su is around twenty-five thousand square miles big, so you can imagine that it would take a lot of sewer pipe to connect all the cabins, towns, lodges, stores and houses to one giant collection station. Since that's not practical, septic tanks are the normal around here. We have a thousand gallon steel tank. I guess that's about the normal size for a house of this size. When we bought the house we were assured that the septic tank had been pumped. That's all well and good, but I didn't want to be sitting in the dining area some evening enjoying  a delightful dinner of some sort and have my senses assaulted by the smell of an overflowing toilet. Perhaps I was over reacting, but I thought that it would be better to have the tank pumped prematurely as opposed to waiting too long and suffering the consequences of my poor decision.

There are a handful of septic system cleaning companies in the valley and I'm sure that all of them are good at their job, however, one stood out because of their name and advertisement. Royal Flush. I can relate to a name like that. Not because I play poker, but because in the course of my lifetime, I can't begin to number the times I've flushed a toilet, but it has to be a pretty impressive number. When I was a kid, myself and my good friend, Marc Ferguson, tried to flush his red sweater down the toilet. I don't know why, its not like he didn't care for it, I think we were just fascinated by toilets and their ability to make things disappear, much like a magic act. They are incredible inventions and much beloved by almost all of us I'm sure. No doubt more than a few people have been on their knees after a night of drunken stupor and hugged the porcelain god, comforted by the cold seeping though the stool.

The fellow who showed up was a younger fellow, quite friendly. He came right up and shook my hand. Frankly, the first thought I had was if he had washed his hands since the last time he'd pumped out a tank. However, he was a professional and the fact that I'm not in hugging the porcelain myself after our encounter must be proof that he did. He took the time to explain how the system worked, pointed out what pipe did what and got to work. In about twenty minutes the whole process was done and he was on his way. I was a few hundred dollars poorer, but that money bought me a lot of peace. For the next couple of years I won't be worrying about a messy situation involving an overflow from my pipes.

If you're in Wasilla or anywhere in the area they service, give Royal Flush a call. Remember their slogan- A Royal Flush Beats a Full House.