Road Closed

My husband knew the danger of telling me this story. After he finished he said, "You're going to post about this, aren't you." It wasn't even a question.

I've mentioned before that my husband is a garbage truck driver. He doesn't do it all the time, just as the backup driver. No one else wanted the job. The one responsibility he does do every week is emptying the compactor at the food court of the establishment. He does it once a week. He used to do it Friday mornings, but since starting school (yay!) he now does it Saturday mornings.

This last Saturday was really foggy and visibility was limited to about 50 feet. He had picked up the compactor and was heading to the dump. He passed a sign that read "Nightly Road Closures" because of nearby construction. At 8 o'clock in the morning, this wasn't a problem, the road opened back up before then. A block later he ran over a "Road Closed" sign.

He quickly pulled the truck over, checked for damage (the grill, already breaking, was now broken a little more), and hurried to the sign to put it back up. A police officer walked over and asked if everything was okay. My husband, now feeling a little foolish that someone had seen the whole thing, said everything was fine. The officer asked if he'd seen the warning ahead. When my husband explained it wasn't a warning of the current closure but of the nightly closure the officer groaned.

The reason the road was closed was not in fact because of the construction itself but because of a small accident. One of the cranes had knocked the light and they were trying to fix it. Three more officers arrived at the scene and they were all surprised that there was no warning or mention of a detour. They wrote an incident report and my husband went on his way, into the fog.

I'm glad he wasn't injured. I was out of town at the time, but I still think it is pretty funny that he flattened one of the large "Road Closed" signs with the truck. I almost wish I could have been there to see it.