One day when Bob and I were returning to the office from lunch (Earl was off speaking to C.I.D. at the I.R.S. about T.A.X.), we encountered a lane closure on Kingston Pike through part of Sequoyah Hills. It was somewhat strange because there were cones blocking the right lane; there was a man holding a "Slow/Stop" sign; but there was absolutely nothing else going on. No road work; nothing. Bob and I decided that it might be fun to somehow acquire one of those green reflective vests and a Slow/Stop sign just to mess with traffic. This is how brain-drained we get at work, folks. But we had no idea how this lane closure would impact our lives (or at least our lunch hours) for the next few weeks.
A few days later, the lane closure was back, but this time there was something happening to warrant the closure. There was a huge truck sitting in the lane with some kind of contraption hooked to the back of it on a hydraulic lift. The contraption was square in shape and was, when we passed by, situated parallel to the road at about one foot above the road surface ("hovering" above the road, if you will). We noticed that it was making a sort of "whooshing" sound and that three or four road workers were standing around it looking down between it and the road surface.
What could this machine be? We began to speculate, which is never a good idea when it involves three lawyers (Earl was back with us this time) whose imaginations are often stifled in favor of more boring stuff like "logic." We used our collective wisdom to conclude that the contraption on the back of the truck was used to pull workers out of a manhole (because, apparently, Knoxville manholes do not have ladders or other means by which men can get in and out of them). We, thus, dubbed the contraption "The Evacuator."
A few days later, we again encountered The Evacuator, and it appeared that it was shooting sparks out of its underside. "Why would they want to burn the guy in the manhole?," we wondered. We then began speculating again and concluded that the sparks arose when the man being sucked up out of the manhole brushed up against the sides of the hole. OF COURSE! The guy in the manhole is obviously wearing chain mail that causes sparks when it scrapes against other stuff. You know, all the sewer rats, alligators, and other stuff down in those manholes make protective gear a necessity.
Another few days later (we kept selecting dining establishments based on their proximity to Sequoyah Hills so that we could continue our fascination with The Evacuator), we saw the contraption raised up against the back of the truck so that it was now perpendicular to the road and its underside was facing us. The underside was covered in some kind of puffy white stuff that we concluded must be bales of cotton. At that point, we dumped the manhole/chain mail theory and decided instead that The Evacuator's purpose was to heat the road surface using fire (hence the sparks/flames) and that the cotton bales were basically used as firewood (I remember hearing at some point that bales of cotton burn easily). Imagine our delight when, a couple of days after that, we drove by to see the cotton bales again facing us (perpendicular to the road) with small flames burning in the cotton on either side of The Evacuator. I honestly thought Bob might pee his pants due to all the excitement (and the approximate gallon of Diet Coke he consumed at lunch). We slowly deduced that The Evacuator is actually a new-fangled pothole repair machine that makes flat patches for potholes (instead of the crappy, bumpy stuff that is normally thrown into the potholes with shovels). Even in light of this new realization, however, the machine will always be known to us as The Evacuator. You can see its fine work in the eastbound lanes of Kingston Pike through Sequoyah Hills.
I nabbed this picture while driving home from work one day:
I was so shocked to see The Evacuator moving and not sitting stationary in Sequoyah Hills that I almost ran off the road. The Evacuator is the big square thing on the back of the truck, and you can see the cotton bales peeking out from the side of the black cover.
Here is a video of how these machines work, although this is an "infrared" machine and I haven't been able to find a video of one that uses fire. But trust me, The Evacuator is all about the flame.
Pretty cool, huh? I'm thinking I may need to change my profile to say I'm an attorney who would rather be a pirate and/or a pothole filler (but not a chain mail-wearing manhole worker).
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