Burying a Trailer

Had an old travel trailer on the back of the property. One of the relatives, down on his luck, had lived there for a while. After he moved off it pretty much became an open house for critters and rodents – possum, raccoon, mice, maybe a snake or two. It was a good-sized trailer.

Anyway nobody had any use for it anymore. And something had to be done. It was an eyesore. But where do you put a 24-foot trailer with flat tires, a rotten floor, rodent inhabited?

In this part of the country, you bury it.

There was a neighbor with a friend who had a brother with an excavator and he showed up to have a look. Ronnie (not his real name.)

We stood there eyeing it. I was trying to imagine the thing. The process. It would take a pretty big hole.

“What would you charge for a job like this?” I asked him.

He thought for a minute. Walked around it.

“How about $800?” he said.

“Can I call you tomorrow?” I asked. Because I had no idea if $800 was the going rate for a job like that, and wanted to do a little homework. Like, ask my cousin what he thought.

“Well I ain’t got a phone,” he said.

“But I can tell you where I live, and you can just swing by the house.”

“It’s over on Fightingtown Creek,” he added.

Now that kind of got my attention. I had driven over that creek quite a few times. After being away a few days or even weeks, I would always slow down to have a look at the water. Low and clear, high and muddy. Fresh brush washed up high on the bank. That creek would tell you a lot how the weather had been the previous days.

And I liked the name. Was curious enough about it to ask around. On the internet, like everybody does. And of course, the more I looked the more different answers I got.

• It came from a translation of an ancient Cherokee myth about frogs rising up and fighting each other with lilypad stalks.

• Native Americans met there for the young bucks to try their martial skills against each other.

• Later anyone local or travelling could have a go in a bare knuckles contest on the riverbank. Gambling, drinking, fighting, that sort of thing.

Maybe all true, depending on the era.

And, though this is not a fishing piece, that water always looked like it might harbor some big trout.

So the next day I followed his directions and ended up on a hillside looking down over some clear cut acreage with Fightingtown Creek at the bottom.

I pulled up and parked beside Ronnie’s truck. He was just getting out and opening the back where a big pit bull sat, staring at me. I waited. Ronnie reached under the seat and fastened an 8-foot length of chain to the dog’s collar. I rolled down the window.

“Okay for me to get out?”

“Sure. Climb on out. He’s fine.”

We walked down the hill toward the creek, climbing around big stumps and pushed over trees.

“What happened to your trees?” I asked.

“Let the timber company have em. To pay the taxes.”

At the bottom of the hill, Fightingtown Creek ran clear and cold through the hollow. Personally, I like to fly fish but this was no fly fishing stream. Steep and narrow, mountain laurel hung low over every pool. Pretty tight, as fishermen like to say. More spinning tackle water. Or just old school cane pole.

I walked up the bank, where the water spilled over some large rocks into a deep pool.

“Any fish in here?” I ventured.

“Oh yes there’s fish. My brother pulled a 24-inch brown out of this very hole last week. You ever want to fish it, just come on over. Anybody asks you tell them you’re a friend of Ronnie Johnson (not his real name.)”

Note to self – Ronnie Johnson, come anytime.

“Thanks, I might do that.”

Across the creek and up the opposite hill were a couple of really nice homes. Second homes. Lawyers and bankers up from the city. And another one being built. A crew was hammering away on an expansive back deck. Something told me Ronnie’s neighbors weren’t especially happy with his landscaping over on this side. Intruding on their view, I guessed.

Not a lot of zoning restrictions out this way. Or covenants. Or HOA’s.

We walked back up the hill to Ronnie’s house. Scattered around the property he had a collection of old trucks, a motorcycle or two, some grading equipment.

I followed him into his office, a small single-wide mobile home. It was filled with spare truck parts, another motorcycle, and interesting art he’d made welding together bits and pieces of metal. Also some screen printing.

He was pretty good.

He told me about the different pieces, meaning, history. Said he’d never liked school as a kid, had finally been diagnosed with dyslexia, among other things. Said he didn’t have a phone because he didn’t read. Had never been able to master it. Seems if you had a phone everyone wanted to text and it was all too much for him.

He offered me a beer, cold Bud in the can. I sipped my beer and wandered the trailer/office/gallery, looking at art.

Told him I really liked the art, and $800 would be fine. How soon could he bury the trailer?

He showed up the next morning pulling a Track Hoe. I could hear him coming up the driveway. He unloaded and immediately set to work, using the big diggers to pull the roof off the old trailer and break it up into manageable pieces. After 30 or 40 minutes he had it all in a pile pushed to the side and was digging the hole. I walked back up to the house to get some lunch.

An hour or so later, I walked back down to see how it was going. Ronnie climbed down off the excavator and came over. The hole was dug and he’d filled it up with the trailer, now just pieces of rotten plywood and scrap metal. You’d have had to look very carefully to decipher what it was before by what it was now.

“I’m going to burn it and pack it down good.” He said.

He poured diesel fuel from a fuel can all over the busted-up trailer in the hole, then tossed a fuel-soaked rag in. Pretty soon we had a nice bonfire going. I told him I needed to go grocery shopping and how long would he be there. Also, did he need anything from the store?

“I’ll be here a while tending this fire. Wanna make sure it burns down nice and even.” He said. “And I’ll take a pack of Marlboro Reds and a Mountain Dew.”

He reached for his wallet but I waved it off and headed for the store.

From out here to town and groceries is quite a ways and when I got back a couple of hours later Ronnie was back up in the driver’s seat, smoothing out the dirt over the top of the hole. The whole area was a lot less cluttered, like there’d never been a trailer there at all. Like whoever had lived there over the years before I came along had never even been there. I paid Ronnie as he loaded up the equipment. He got back in his truck and rolled down the window.

“Rain’ll be coming in tomorrow. You oughta spread you some grass seed around before it starts.”

He smiled. “And I’m serious about the fishing. Come over anytime.”

I watched him drive off, could hear his truck pulling hard up the hill and over the ridge toward Fightingtown Creek. Then I walked out to the barn to get some fescue seed.