The joy of trucks ...

When my kids were little, they were fascinated with trucks. We lived in an apartment complex where the garbage truck came early every Monday morning to empty out the huge container that sat in an enclosure not far from our front door. The boys would gather at the window and watch the process in awe ... and if you asked one of them what they were going to be when they grew up, they would confidently respond, "A babbage wuck dwiva" ~ this when they were barely two and couldn't pronouce all of their letters yet ...

There was also the constant and quite annoying ice cream trucks that drove around our apartment complex all summer long. When my children were really little, I told them it was the "music truck" ... and never let on about the ice cream part ... they were always happy just to hear the songs it would play!

Look at the unusual truck that arrived at our driveway early this morning! I immediately regretted that my children were grown and gone ... and that no grandchildren were here! Because we would have all gone outside and observed (from a distance) what was going on. We would have watched the fellow remove the grating and lower the piping down down down into our drain and do all of the fancy stuff he did to clean it all out. The truck was very loud this morning, so some of us undoubtedly would have had our hands covering our ears! And there would have been a million questions as to what was happening.

A few years ago when Jesse's family still lived in town and the little kids would come over to play, one of their favorite things to do was to put stuff down that drain. We had a little game we would play: the kiddos would gather very small pebbles, an occasional stone or two, a few leaves, maybe an acorn or a twig, and sometimes small pine cones ~ and then one at a time, they would drop them down and listen for the noise at the bottom ... plunk plunk plink, plop ... and then we would try to repeat that exact sound and rhythm with our voices ... and laugh out loud ... and crack up! Half the fun was scouring the yard for tiny objects to drop down that drain and try to guess what sound it would make as it landed in the water below.

Well, I suppose it's a good thing this Plummer's truck comes along every now and again to clean out all of that junk! I can still hear it down the street and around the corner ... too bad I can't share the joy of it with my little grandchildren ... I'm sure we would have followed it all over our neighborhood(sigh).