Waterbeds, Dimes, and DOGE

 

by Pa Rock

Reminiscer 

More than five decades ago when I was on active duty with the US Army, I served with a young man who had quite the way with women.  He was so confident of his abilities with the fairer sex that he had the backseats removed from his old van and installed a large mattress on the floor behind the driver and passenger seats so that if he got "lucky" while on a date, as he usually did, my friend did not have to waste ten or even fifteen dollars on a motel room.  

Those rolling pleasure palaces were not all that uncommon in the late sixties and early seventies, and my friend decided to make his extra-special so that it would stand out from the rest.  His included stereo speakers, fancy curtains, and finally he got rid of the mattress and put in a waterbed.  At that time waterbeds were just starting to make an appearance in America's bedrooms, and the basic ones were large, heavy duty, vinyl envelopes measuring several feet in each direction that were placed right on the floor and filled with a garden hose.  My friend found one that fit perfectly in the back of his van, filled it, and was off to the races!

He had a successful date or two, and things were all hunky and dory until one night while in a rush to get to a secluded location, he took a corner too fast, several hundred pounds of water in the mattress suddenly sloshed and shifted with the curve, and the van rolled over bursting the mattress and almost drowning the young soldier and his startled date.

Talk about a mood-spoiler!  

Yesterday was the first time I had thought about my friend's memorable misadventure in many years, and the thing that brought it to mind was a story that I heard on National Public Radio (NPR).  This past Tuesday morning, a little before daylight, a semi-tractor-trailer rig veered off of a major highway in Wise County, Texas, just north of the community of Alvord and about 75 miles from Dallas.   The driver over-corrected as he jerked the steering wheel trying to get his big rig back on the road, and the vehicle rolled over onto the roadway.  What brought that about was undoubtedly the same thing that caused my friend's van to roll over fifty years earlier - the weight in the back shifted.

The truck's cargo was from the US Mint in Denver, and it consisted of 8 million, freshly-minted, slick, loose dimes - or $800,000 - which spilled out all over the roadway.  The truck's ultimate destination was not released to the media, but the assumption was that it was headed to the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas.

The truck driver and his passenger, an armed guard, were taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and the truck was reported to have suffered "moderate" damage.  Cleanup was conducted by local law enforcement, and fire department, the county sheriff's department, and representatives from the US Treasury.  The highway was closed for about 14 hours and reopened at around 7:00 that evening.  

The clean-up process included buckets and shovels along with trucks with vacuum hoses like the ones used to remove sewage and water.

Because the massive load of dimes appears to have been the property of the federal government, and because, unlike some in the billionaire class, I support the government through my taxes, this taxpayer would like verification that all of that public money has been recovered, and to that end I have come up with a plan:   All those dimes should be taken to a secure location, a windowless warehouse, for instance, and then Elon, Big Balls, and the rest of the DOGE team should be sent in with their pocket calculators to count them.  It would certainly be a more "efficient" use of DOGE than the public has witnessed so far.  

Maybe they could roll those dimes while they are at it.