Fiction - Turmoil in the backyard

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I recently wrote about an old hotel and how the toilet had a pan system in the days before flushing toilets were easily installed. Here is a short short story I wrote about a true incident. It’s written as a monologue so I hope you can understand it. And it’s much longer than my normal posts so feel free to move on if it’s too long. However hopefully you’ll get a laugh from it. Turmoil In The Backyard Hello. I'm Sid. I'm nearly 14. I was born in 1947 and it's now 1961 so I can't leave school till next year - when I'm 14 – not like my parents. They both left school at 12 and went to work. They've worked hard all their lives, so they keep telling me, and I know it’s true. My parents still go on about the Depression all the time. Another year and I'll be finished school. Dad says I should be grateful for the chances I've got. Life might be tough he says but it was a lot tougher twenty years ago. Anyway, at the rate I'm going I could be expelled pretty soon without ever making it to 14. The whole darn thing wasn't my fault. Me mates get up to all sorts of pranks and are forever dreaming up wild schemes which always seem to end up in chaos. I was pretty much involved in the last little prank unfortunately. But I thought it would just be a bit of a lark. Tom said they’d never know who did it. It didn’t take them long to find out! Tom and I are lying low hoping all the fuss will blow over. Mum and Dad say they can't hold their heads up in the town now. I should think they'd be too busy holding their noses to worry about their heads. But as I said, how was I to know it was going to turn out so bad? Dad says 'think things through and work out what the consequences might be'. I think I'd better try and do that next time. I'll tell you what happened. We had a pretty good time over the holidays. Tom and me and the rest of the kids in the street played a lot of cricket down the back lane. The houses here all have these big back yards – I probably don't need to explain that to you folk - but what with hen-houses, vegie patches and clothes-lines there's no room for playing cricket so we play up and down the back lane. It's on the nose a bit but only the man who empties the toilets ever drives up and down there so it's pretty safe. They call him the dunny man. All the houses in the town back onto lanes, and the toilets are all right on the back fence. There's a trapdoor at the bottom of the back of the toilet and the dunny man can reach in, haul out the full pan and replace it with an empty one. I wouldn't have his job for anything. He walks up one side of the lane and does several houses before doing the same down the other side. Then he moves the truck on fifty yards or so. The toilets are made of corrugated iron and are really hot in summer. And the blowflies – but you probably don't want to hear about that either. These are some of the less attractive things about Australia. The mothers yell at us sometimes when one of us hits a six and it smacks against the tin toilet and someone's in there. It gives you a big shock if you're the one sitting in there. Tom said when they were little, they used to poke a branch up through the hole in the back so when someone came down to the toilet there was a branch growing out the hole. Then one day they poked a branch through Mrs Lincoln's toilet and she was sitting on it. Tom said he couldn't sit down for a week after his father found out. Anyway Tom comes up with this idea just last week and I went along with it. I'll know better next time. Tom had been having a bit of a hard time with old Ernie, the dunny man. He's got it in for Tom - and me as well now, for sure. He's never had any time for Tom, not since Tom's dog, Blackie, got in his hen yard and killed off half his hens. We offered to bury them – what was left of them – but he wouldn't have a bar of it. We didn't need to feed Blackie for a week. I mean, Blackie was just doing what's natural to a dog. It's not Tom's fault if Blackie can scale a six foot fence. Every since then Ernie doesn't put the pan right under the seat on our toilets and if you don't remember to check each Friday and pull it right under, it's a bit messy. Ernie's got a foul temper. He'll even chuck a rock at you. Which is why we hatched our plan to get back at him. Anyway, this one night – the dunny cart does its round at night or early in the morning - you wouldn't want that smell being broadcast in the middle of the day. It would put you off your dinner. Anyway, this one night, Tom and I hide behind the potato vine – everyone's toilet in Australia seems to have potato vines growing over them – and wait for Ernie's truck. We've tied an old length of rope to the gate post near the toilet. We hear the truck coming and we're crouching there. Sure enough, Ernie stops the truck in the exact same place he always stops it. He takes our pan then when he starts on the pans on the other side of the lane, we sneak out and run the rope through the handles of the pans on our side of the truck. We tie a knot on the handle of the last pan near the front of the truck then we bolt back behind the fence. So Ernie comes back with the last pan, hoists it on the truck and climbs into the cab. He revs the engine and the truck crawls up the lane. The rope tightens, stretches, the knot takes up and the pans come sliding off really slowly. They don't make a lot of noise, probably 'cause they're full but the smell is something else. It was just a pity that it was right outside our back gate. Next time I'll take Dad’s advice and think of the consequences first.