Cleaning the Drainage Tubes

In the development there are concrete drainage tubes that go under the roadways.  2 of the tubes had become very congested with dirt as the roads were built before the ditches and it was some time before the ditches were completed.  In the meantime the dirt was washing down the tubes and eventually plugging them off.  The one in front of our house is very large about 3 feet in diameter. It was only about 1/3 full of dirt but, not wanting a repeat of last years drainage fiasco I thought it might help if the tube were completely free of debris.  To that end Hormelis crawled inside of it and cleaned it out.  They put the dirt on a piece of tin and tied a rope at each end. When the dirt was loaded Jeffery would pull it out and shovel it into the wheelbarrow and haul is away.  Then when it was empty Hormelis would pull the rope and bring it back in. 

That was the easy one.  The other tube (below) was choked 3/4 full of dirt.  It was a much smaller tube about 18" diameter.  Hormelis wouldn't fit into it so Jeffery (bless his heart) crawled inside that claustraphobic thing and cleaned it out.  It took him 2 1/2 days as the tube was 30 feet long and very dirty.

The poor kid put down an old pair of crocs to use as knee pads.

His arms were scraping on the sides of the tube where they joined together.  I put big band aides on his arms to protect them as he couldn't wear a long sleeved shirt as it would ride up in the tight space.  Into that tube he crawled and worked with a tiny garden shovel as that is all that would fit in there.

Then he had to back out ahead of the tin as he couldn't fit around it.  I know that there would not be enough money in the world to pay me to do that even if I were physically able.  I asked him if he was scared and he shrugged and said "no, soy hombre" or no "I am a man".  Thank you God for making men feel the need to prove themselves!