News of a racket in Lourdes between two fellows clearing snow brought back memories from 25 years ago of a story from Sheaves Cove, another community on the Port au Port peninsula.
A university mate spent the summer working with the Mounties patrolling that portion of the west coast of Newfoundland and brought back all sorts of tales – tall and otherwise – as he took the Force out for a pre-hiring test spin. Aside: he joined the Force and has worked his way up to dizzying heights.
Anyway, seems that in Sheaves Cove, constables responded to a call one night of two fellows going at each other’s property with chainsaws. A dispute over a fence or something got a bit out of hand a before too long, the boys were headed for the Poulans or whatever gas-powered wood-slicer was in the shed.
When the Mounties arrived one guy was chopping into the disputed fence while the other fellow was slicing into his neighbour’s house.
Then there was the one about what became known as the Bay St. George Space Station. A crowd gathered in the kitchen of buddy’s new house to celebrate finishing the work on the place and getting the family moved in.
In the middle of the festivities, the house was rocked by an explosion. Da b’ys rushed around to figured out what had happened and to see if anyone was injured. As the story goes – and this is where it hits Mythbusters territory - they’d hooked up the hot water tank and forgot to install the pressure relief valve. Once the pressure built up in the tank, it had no where to go but out through the drain valve toward the bottom of the tank.
The thing reputedly took off like a rocket and headed up through the floor. It tore out the toilet and tank, which happened to be installed above on the floor immediately above the hot water heater. The toilet wound up 300 yards out in the back yard and the water heater ended up 600 yards out.
-srbp-