Things you must never, ever do...

I've had word out that I need two 55-gallon plastic barrels. The word that has mostly come back is "Yeah, you and everybody else, sucker." I need them for my little cabin's little septic field, so paying full retail for a couple of new potable-water barrels was going to just kill me. It's been on my mind.

Landlady came up today, and with her was my friend M! Whom I haven't seen since early December. And with M was two big plastic barrels. I was delighted, and asked him were they salvage or did I owe him money. He said no, they were salvage, and told me the story.

It seems that a few days ago he noticed four such barrels sitting outside a car wash. He asked if he might take two of them, and the guy asked first what he was going to use them for. M told him, and the guy said, "Oh, that's fine. We gave some to a guy who made water troughs out of them, and his horses all died. We didn't quite get sued over that."

M brought the barrels home and there was maybe an inch of residue in the bottom, so he decided to rinse them out. Between the sidewalk and the curb was a weedy patch of gravel, full of dandelions and who-knows what else. He dumped the rinse water in there, and within twelve hours there was a ... patch of gravel. Nothing but gooey remnants where there had once been weeds.

So I don't know what they put in that stuff we wash our cars with, but for damned sure from now on I'm gonna be careful about getting any in my mouth.