A LETTER HOME

BY RAYBURN CASEY HALL

Hello Mama and Daddy

Just a few words to let you know I have a new job and doing fine. Daddy, all those years I spent taking care of our old outhouse is finally going to pay off for me. I went to work in an outhouse that covers about 80 acres. Now you can really be proud of your oldest boy.



Everybody that lives inside the city limits have toilets inside their house and when they flush them it all goes to a place called the Wastewater Treatment Plant. When the water comes into the plant it has to go through some screens to remove all the trash. I haven't figured out how anybody can get a tin can or a bottle down a commode yet, but they are doing it some how. And in the next process we take tons of grit and sand out of the wastewater every day. These city people must use sand paper for toilet paper.



Daddy you ought to see the pumps that pumps the wastewater through the plant. One of them will pump 40,000,000 gallons of water each day. That many zeros means it's 40 million gallons. Don't worry Daddy I'm not trying to show off my smartness and get ahead of my raising. I just know that you don't have very much experience at counting to a million and may have forgotten how many zeros it takes to make a million. And I will be using the word wastewater a lot but its just a fancy word for used water.



And Mama, you remember giving me a whipping and making me wash my mouth out with soap because I used that little four letter word to describe what was in our outhouse. Well everybody here uses that word to describe what we work with and I'm afraid I'm getting a bad habit of using the word myself. All the Big Shots wants us to call it "biosolids" . They said if we use the word "biosolids" it will improve our public image. But my boss said he would fire an operator that he heard using that word near him. So to satisfy you and my boss I will call it sludge from now on.



Well, anyway the wastewater is pumped into a big concrete tank with chains and sprockets and rakes called a primary clarifier. The sludge is scraped off the bottom of the clarifier and pumped to a big round tank called a digester. My boss told me that the digesters work like a human stomach. The sludge is pumped to the digester three times a day and kept at about the same temperature as the human body. The sludge will digest in the tanks about like food does in your stomach. Part of the sludge is converted to methane gas. Mama, the smell of a digester kinda makes me homesick. It reminds me of sitting on the front with Uncle Martin after supper when we had Pinto beans for supper.



They got another tank where they pump the wastewater to and blow air into it all the time. Daddy you always said if you stir in mess that it will always stink but this don't. It smells a lot like a new fresh plowed field. The wastewater in the tank is called mixed liquor. Don't worry Mama its not one of those fancy mixed drinks that the city folks have concocted. The mixed liquor looks a lot like chocolate milk and the sludge they settle out of it reminds me of the chocolate gravy you always cook for breakfast.



I told my boss how we deal with the waste in our outhouse on the farm. I told him we sprinkled lime on the waste in our outhouse about once a week and every few years we would dig a new hole and move the outhouse on top of it. And then we would cover up the old hole and let the waste turn back to dirt. Well Daddy according to my boss you are breaking a federal law. He said it was against the federal law for the city to treat their wastewater in that manner. Daddy be careful because it would be a shame to get caught burying outhouse waste after out foxing Mr. Hoover and all his revenuers all these years with your moonshine operation. Daddy I never heard you mention a department of the government called the EPA. Did Mr. Roosevelt create that department too?



Daddy before I left home for the big city you tried to give me the benefit of your experience with city people you met in the army during the war. Well I found some people doing and acting just like you said they would but I've found some that don't.



You remember telling me that city people were always in a hurry to get somewhere or get something done. Well Daddy these fellows that I work with aren't like that at all. You know how on the farm we all try to get everything done before daylight or before breakfast or before it gets too hot, or before lunch or before it rains or before the first big frost or before dark. Well the city people I work with always want to wait until after a certain time. They always want to do everything after awhile, or in a little bit, or in a minute or after break or after lunch or tomorrow or next week.



Daddy, I had a long talk with my boss about my future here as a wastewater treatment plant operator the other day and he said that I was a natural for working in wastewater and seem to take to it like a duck does to swimming. He advised me to go to night school and get a GED and it would help me a lot when an opportunity for a promotion came along. A GED or a General Equivalency Diploma means that it is equivalent to a high school diploma. How about that Daddy I would be the first person in our family to have an offical piece of paper that says I'm smart. But he said if I really wanted to go far in the wastewater treatment business I should get me a sheep skin to hang on my wall. Well Daddy I want you to tear that old coon's skin down that I'm drying on the back of the barn and put me a sheep skin up there to dry as soon as you can.



Well Mama and Daddy I better close for now. I'll be home in a few weeks to visit so don't y'all worry about me. OK.







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