Good Toast: 2015-05-03

Friday, May 8, 2015

Friday Factoid with Dr. Patty

Patty here. There's an elusive back story to most items we use every day, but none so strange and unique as the dump truck. While it's assumed that this vessel of dirt and debris has been solely used for construction purposes, the true nature of the dump truck's birth and rise to glory is as riveting as any superhero origin.

In the small Italian town of Reggio, February 2nd, 1923, a threat began to loom. This threat came from sewage, for Reggio was situated on the edge of a bay whose currents took all of the town's waste out to the Adriatic sea twice a day. Except, as fate would have it, the tidal flows changed that morning. A shift in warm water currents caused the town's sewer systems to back up when they should have been flushing, and twice a day the entire town, once known for its beautiful terraced streets, coffee shops, pizzerias, and endless wrought iron porches, was instead transformed into a gag-inducing canal of human waste.

What was the town to do? The answer came in the same manner as most miracles, after great bouts of prayer and the burning of local witches (this was also the birth of the modern tanning salon, but that's a story for another day). Prior to this, Vincenzo Abaronay, known affectionately to his friends as "Meat-a-ball," had been using his large rumbling truck to prop up failing building fronts, and once as a platform for a man to get his flung baby down from an eaves trough (his favourite football team had been routed, and in a fit of rage he'd mistakenly thrown his baby instead of his keys). Two weeks into the disaster, Meat-a-ball had been driving main street looking for women to whistle at, when something landed in the back of his truck. It sounded like a wet mop hitting the floor. Then it happened again. And again. Pretty soon it was raining down on Meat-a-ball, and he realized that formerly butt-clenching citizens, who couldn't stand waiting for the reversed tides anymore, were holding their derrieres over their porch railings and releasing themselves into the back of his truck. This, dear readers, is how it came to be known as the dump truck. Twice a day Meat-a-ball drove the town's main thoroughfare, collecting what came to be known as "the brown tax," and twice a day he deposited the waste upstream from their neighboring rival town.

This arrangement worked well for Meat-a-ball, paid handsomely for his efforts, until the tides mysteriously corrected, latrines again flushed properly, and the good citizens of Reggio no longer had a need to air-bomb their Sloppy Joes into his appropriately shaped vehicle. While this unfortunate twist might have concerned most industries being replaced by newer and better technologies, Meat-a-ball wasn't worried. Local mules that had been carrying construction dirt from the ground-breaking of Reggio's first gelato shop were unionizing, and the site's corrupt boss needed a moveable vessel to remove dirt in their place. Thus, the dump truck was adopted as a construction tool, and few remembered the desperate days when it had slowly driven below their porches, saving one small town from disastrous ruin.

Yours truly, Dr. Patty

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Go Fund Me!

Huzzah! Further to spreading the Good Toast word to all of your cohorts, you can also financially give Good Toast a buttery leg up through a new Go Fund Me site, located through the link on the top left of this site. The process is simple. Donate anything you'd like, pennies to dollars, and show your support for great content. This is the polar opposite of leaving the net entirely, or any similar shenanigans, but big steps must be taken to make things like this work in any seriousness. I'm humbled by everyone's support so far, and super dedicated to seeing Good Toast last the long term, so no pressure!