You've seen the warnings: Before you dig, call.
Workmen come by, paint lines on the sidewalk and plant small flags: here's your gas, here's your juice, here's your white-wine pipe (applies only to Edina), here's your sewer pipe, which has borne a century of indignities to the public mains.
So naturally, I dug without calling. It was just the backyard, and I was planting an arbor vitae — that's Latin for "Tree of Life." The old one had died, making it an Arbormortus, I suppose. Got out the spade and turned the earth, and immediately hit The Wire.
It was buried about a foot down. We had met before. Every time something needs planting in this part of the garden, we encounter The Wire.
The first time I struck it with the spade was years ago, and I remember standing very still, wondering if I was dead.
A plane went overhead, but that didn't mean anything; they probably don't get the dead to hell in ferryboats these days when they can pack them in planes where everyone has their seat back and the drink cart is pushed around by an enormous horned crying baby who only has pretzels.
No, it wasn't a live power wire. It seemed to extend for a good distance, but it was buried too deep to bring up. What could it possibly be?
Perhaps the house was constantly beset by electrical storms in the olden days, and the wire was intended to ground the house in case of lightning strikes. Otherwise, I guess, the lightning just hung around the house, arcing out of outlets at random intervals. You touch a metal doorknob, and your toenails shoot through your shoes and embed in the plaster, smoking.
