This Old House

       Ah, the joys, trials, and tribulations of home ownership!  I’ll tell you, friends, owning my first home has been quite the learning experience.  In the last approximately one and a half years, I’ve gone from being a fairly bumbling and incapable handyman to a full blown home improvement  and landscaping expert.  Whether it’s hanging cabinets, installing ceiling fans, building a deck, planting trees, constructing an outdoor shed, patching holes in drywall, installing a doggie door, hanging curtains, replacing toilet hardware, or adding shelving to open closet space, I’ve pretty much become a master craftsman around the home.  No project is too big for me!  If I were a severe cocaine addict, I might even do the whole Tim Allen “Home Improvement” growl thing that we are all familiar with.  Thankfully, I’m not.

       Anyway,  it was during one of these projects early last week that I made an alarming discovery.  I had been tasked with planting eight Red Robin Photinias along the south wall of my home in order to provide some color to that part of the yard.  The new foliage on these popular southern shrubs turns a deep red color in the sun, and they would look beautiful while also obscuring the power meter, cable box, and other such necessary but unsightly utilitarian devices.

       Working alone in the searing Texas heat, I set about digging eight holes, each one approximately ten inches deep and twenty two inches in diameter.  After the first couple of holes, I realized that this task was going to be much more challenging and time-consuming than I originally thought. 

       The soil around my home is heavily compacted and has a consistency not unlike wet clay in most areas, making it very thick, sticky, and difficult to work with.  I had encountered these problems before around other areas of the yard, so no real surprises there.  However, what I had not taken into account was that the south side of my home is the one side that receives full sunlight and no shade throughout the entire day, from sunrise to sunset.  The constant heat from the sunlight makes this area of the yard much drier than the other areas, and as such, the soil maintains a consistency not unlike solid fucking rock.  The hard blade of a shovel is useless against it, and the only way I managed to make any progress after removing the top layer of sod was to go at it hard with a pick axe.  On top of that, I of course had to refill the holes after the plants were added and then haul away and dispose of the leftover soil, making for a long and arduous day of work.

       It was slow going, and the pick axe handle had begun to raise painful blisters on my gloveless hands.  The heat of the sun beating down on me was ruthless, and each swing of the pick axe brought forth more sweat, more muscle pain, and the occasional dizzy spell.  Yet still I pushed myself harder and harder, knowing that the full completion of this job would add needed curb appeal to my home.  More importantly, it would also mean that I would never have to do this shit again.

       It was around hole six that things began to get a little shaky.  I had unwisely decided that water breaks were a waste of valuable time, and I had forgone those and any other type of rest in order to maximize my speed.  I had cultivated a process for digging the holes, each swing of the pick axe striking the ground in a rhythmic thud.  I would use a shovel to remove the loosened soil, and then it was back to work with the pick axe.  This backbreaking process, combined with hours of intense heat from the sun, began to take its toll on my body.  At various times, I had what could most closely be described as an out of body experience, where I was viewing myself from above, and I lost all consciousness of my physical being.  While I could see that I was still toiling away, I felt no pain, no heat, no thirst, nothing at all.  I was during a moment like this that things went strangely awry.

       Giving the pick axe a mighty swing, I thrust it into the ground, pulling up a massive chunk of solid clay soil.  At that moment, the ground beneath me began to rumble, shake, and come apart all around me.  My first thought was that I had struck a water pipe, but no moisture came up from the ground.  I became certain that I had not in fact struck a water pipe when, a few moments later, the ground I was standing on completely gave way, sending me tumbling into the darkness until I struck hard ground below.  Looking up from my back, all I could see was dirt and dust tumbling into the hole from above, but as the debris began to settle, I saw rays of sunlight filtering through the clouds of dust.  I could see that I had fallen what must have been thirty feet below the surface of the ground, landing on my back in a large cavern of some sort.

       As I brushed the dirt off of myself and slowly began to move around, I was surprised to find that I had not been injured by the fall.  Sure, there were some scrapes here and there, but a thirty foot fall would normally cause some pretty serious fractures, so I considered myself lucky to escape the plunge without any major trauma.  My eyes had not yet adjusted to the light, or lack thereof, so all I could see besides darkness at that point was the sunlight pouring in from the hole above.  I waited for the rest of the dust to settle so that I could begin to devise a way to extract myself from this great cavity in the earth.

       After squatting in the dark for a few minutes, my eyes finally began to adjust to my dim surroundings, and what I saw astonished me.  I had expected to find myself in a rocky limestone cavern of the type not uncommon throughout Central Texas, the kind usually carved out by thousands of years of flowing underground rivers and streams.  Instead, I discovered that I had stumbled upon a man-made tunnel! 

       At first I thought it must have been an old mineshaft or something, but I quickly dismissed that notion, as there is not any material worth mining in this part of the country.  As I ventured further into the tunnel, I soon discovered that the tunnel was much less crude than I had originally thought.  Once I ventured past the debris that had accumulated from my fall, I found that I was actually inside a fairly sophisticated concrete tunnel, and it was running directly beneath my house! 

       About thirty feet from my original landing spot, I saw a large steel door.  As I tried to get my bearings, I realized that whatever may lay behind that door would be situated directly underneath the master bathroom of my home.  I thought surely this must be some sort of tunnel crafted by the city, perhaps to monitor the sewage system, electricity, or water flow.  I had never heard of anything like this outside of a major city, so I was skeptical to say the least.  Finding no other exit or way back up to the surface, I decided that I should check the door.  Perhaps there would be an exit on the other side.

       The door had a large metal handle on it, and I thought for sure it would be locked, but as I pushed down on the handle, I was surprised to discover that the door opened in front of me.  I would have never guessed in a million years what I would see on the other side. 

       As the door slowly opened, I observed a large room, approximately the same size and rectangular shape of the master bathroom located directly above.  The room was dark, but lit by several electrical panels with tiny green, red, and blue LEDs blinking away.  At the end of the room, I saw two men in dark suits and sunglasses sitting in front of a large screen, one with blond hair, the other black.  I was not able to tell exactly what I was looking at on the screen, but it appeared to be a large, white oval and nothing more.

       “What in the hell is going on here?” I thought to myself.

       As I tried to figure out exactly what it was that I was looking at, I absentmindedly let go of the handle of the steel door, and, before I realized what had happened, the door shut with a loud click behind me.  Both men snapped their heads back and looked in my direction, with looks of shock and alarm on their faces. 

       After a very brief moment of silence as we regarded each other, the man with blond hair sharply raised his hand to his ear and spoke into the cuff of his sleeve.  “Code 10!  Code 10!  We have a Code 10 in Sublevel 1, Sector 28!  I repeat, Code 10, Sublevel 1, Sector 28!”

       A red light began flashing in the room, and a deafening alarm began sounding directly above my head.  Placing my hands to my ears, I shouted, “What the fuck?  Can you turn that fucking thing off?  I’m not an intruder!  I live in the house directly above us and fell through a hole in my yard!”

       The man with black hair then began shouting in my direction.  “Sir, I need you to place your hands on the wall behind you and spread your legs, now!”

       “The hell I will!” was my irritated reply.  “Look turn off the fucking alarm already!  This is my property.”

       The blond man pushed some buttons on the panel in front of him, and the lights in the room raised as the alarm cut off. 

       “Thank Christ!” I said, as I dropped my hands from my ears.  “Look, you’ve got ten seconds to tell me what the hell is going on here, or I’m going to call the police”

       “Sir, we are agents of the federal government, and we must ask you to do as we say and turn around, place your hands on the wall, and spread your legs.”

       “Again, you’re on my property, or underneath it at least.  I don’t have to do anything you say.  Identify yourselves.  What department are you with?”

       “Um, We’re, ah, with.. Homeland Security,” said the man with black hair.  “Yes, that’s it.  We’re… monitoring the area for possible… um, terrorist activity and whatnot.  It’s a fairly hush-hush operation.”

       I thought about this information for a minute, and I was more than a little uncomfortable with the explanation.  “So you’re with Homeland Security, and you’re monitoring the area for terrorist cells, and you’re doing all this from under my house?  What’s that on the screen there?”

       Both men looked at the white oval on the scree, and the blond agent spoke.  “Uh, sir, that’s a top secret monitoring system.  You know, not unlike radar.  Helps us to, uh, track individuals of interest.  It’s… it’s a highly, um, technical, and complicated piece of equipment.  Yes.  So, uh, of course,  we can’t tell you anything more.”

       “For reasons of national security!” the black-haired agent interjected.

       “Right! Right!”  said the blond agent, nodding his head in agreement.  “National security!”

       “Well, you guys don’t seem very certain,”  I said.  ”As a matter of fact, I think I know what’s really going on here, and it makes me ashamed of my government.  I think you guys are part of a secret operation that allows you to spy on American citizens by way of the Patriot Act.  I always knew that we were headed down the road of George Orwell’s 1984, I just never imagined it was going on right under my nose.  Or under my house, to be more accurate.  You guys are Big Brother!”

       Both agents looked from me to one another.  To my surprise, both men began laughing hysterically.  The blond agent doubled over, his sunglasses falling off to reveal tears of laughter rolling down his cheek as he clutched his sides.  The black-haired agent slapped his knee over and over again, placing his head down on his desk.  After probably about three minutes of solid laughter, the two men slowed and began to regain their composure.  Then the black-haired agent spoke.

       “Oh, sir.  Wow, if you only knew how wrong you are!  Damn, I haven’t laughed like that in ages.”

       The blond agent chimed in.  “Yeah, sir, you’re way off base here.  We can’t tell you what’s going on, but let me assure you that it’s not what you are thinking.  Come with me, sir, and I’ll escort you out of here, and we’ll get someone to take care of that hole in your yard.”

       Just as the blond agent began walking toward me, I noticed a change on the screen.  Within the white oval, I saw the face of my pug, JoJo.  JoJo was sniffing at something, his face getting closer to what must have been a camera.  Then, he stuck out his tongue, and ripples spread across the oval as JoJo lapped up water.  Slowly, it began to dawn on me what I was seeing.  My dog was drinking out of the toilet in my master bathroom!

       “What the fuck?”  I shouted.  ” What the fuck are you guys doing down here, and why the hell is there a camera in my god damn toilet?  Last time I checked, there weren’t any terrorists hiding up my ass, you sons of bitches!”

       Both agents turned as pale as ghosts, and they looked at one another in a panic, as if trying to come up with something to explain this away.  Then, just as the black-haired agent was about to speak, the image on the screen of my dog drinking from the toilet flashed off, replaced by the faces of President Bush and Vice President Cheney themselves!

       President Bush, clutching a bag of popcorn, then said, “Hey there, Joe.  Hey, Alan.  Well, we’re ready for our daily dose of piss and shit movies!  Hope y’all got something good for us today!”

       Dick Cheney then chimed in.  “Yeah, I wanna see somebody drop a huge log!  That would get me so hot!”

       I was so shocked that I couldn’t move!  “What the fuck did he just say?  Aw, man!  You guys are recording people going to the bathroom so that Bush and Cheney can get off on their nasty sexual fetishes, aren’t you?”

       “Holy shit, who was that?”  exclaimed President Bush, and then monitor quickly flipped off.

       The agents looked at each other, blushing sheepishly, neither able to look me in the eyes.  “Sir,” the blond agent said, “We’re sorry for what you’ve seen here today.  Trust me when I tell you that we don’t enjoy this job in any way.  It’s just that the president and vice president have an insatiable lust for urolagnia and fecophilia.  They have to see over a thousand people use the bathroom per day in order to keep their crazy impulses in control.  If it weren’t for us, both men would probably be in jail right now for sneaking into public restrooms, and then who would run the country?  In that way, we’re actually providing a great service to this country.”

       I shook my head in disgust at the two men in front of me, but a part of me actually felt pity for them.  I mean, I think my job is pretty shitty, but I had no idea how shitty, in a literal sense, a job could actually be!

       “Look,” I said, “I want that fucking camera out of my toilet now.  I’ll never be able to take a crap or piss again if I know I’m being watched.  I’ll keep my mouth shut for the good of the nation, but I’m gonna expect some tax breaks from this or some shit.  Jesus, what a bunch of sick bastards! Now get me the hell out of here!”

       The blond agent looked down at the ground, still unable to look me in the eye.  “Yes, of course, sir.  Right this way.  Your silence on this matter is greatly appreciated.  And we’ll see what we can do about the tax breaks.”

       Just then, the black-haired agent drew what looked like a handgun and quickly fired off one shot aimed directly at me.  I felt a sting in my neck, and I could not believe that the government had decided to neutralize me for what I had seen.  I quickly began to lose consciousness as my vision blurred and then went completely black.

       That’s all I really remember from the whole incident, and I question in my mind whether the whole thing really happened.  I awoke in my yard some time laterafter having passed out for an unknown time period.  As I looked around, all eight of the bushes had been planted.  There was no giant hole in the ground, and everything looked pretty much as it should.  I ran into the house and headed straight for the master bathroom.  Inspecting the inner rim of my toilet, I could find no traces of a camera.  Was this all just a heat-induced hallucination?  I may never know for sure.  The IRS certainly hasn’t given me any tax breaks, the greedy pricks.  One thing is certain, though:  I think I’m gonna have trouble going to the bathroom for the rest of my life.