Hark! The Harem Elderlies Ring!

Hick sent a text at 2:30 on Sunday. Here it is. You can decipher it. This one's pretty understandable, despite Hick's penchant for leaving out words and using creative spelling:

"I have to run by the apartments on my way the ladies have called and said they hurd a explosion in the trash room"

Okay. I assumed Hick meant on his way home. A journey which he does not usually start until 4:30 or 5:00. Yet this text didn't seem like he was rushing over to the apartments. You'd think an explosion might merit a sense of urgency. 

When Hick got home around 5:30, he said he found nothing amiss in the trash room.

"Heh, heh! How many ladies called you? It's those valentines. Each one thinks she's your special sweetheart, and doesn't know about the others. They just wanted a way to lure you over there on a Sunday."

"Two of them called. They actually heard it on Saturday."

"But they waited until Sunday to call you? For an EXPLOSION?"

"Yeah. I don't know what they heard. I looked all around and didn't see nothin' that exploded. There was a crack in the drywall. I think maybe there was an earthquake. I looked it up, and there was a 2.1, and I saw people on Facebook talking about it. But I thought it was a few days before Sunday. It's an old building. It might have settled, and cracked the drywall."

"Was it cracked before? And just now got noticed?"

"I don't remember it being cracked before, but it could have been. Just a thin crack, like that one we have between the kitchen and living room ceiling."

I tried to look up earthquakes. There WAS one, but it was in Caruthersville, which is quite a distance from the apartments. I don't know if such a minor earthquake could even be noticed around here. Then again, our towns sit atop a honeycomb of lead mines.

Many years ago there was an earthquake when I was lying on the couch in my $17,000 house that is just a couple blocks away from the senior apartments. I thought a big dump truck was going down the street out front. I felt a vibration, and the windows rattled. I suppose such an event might crack old drywall. But it didn't sound like an explosion.

Hick said there are rules to NOT throw glass containers down the trash chute. Something like that could land on the metal slide part in the trash room, and make a loud noise. He doesn't know what it was, but everything looked safe.

Reminds me of the time I heard an explosion here in our current hillbilly mansion. It was an expired can of biscuits in The Original Frig. That's when we got FRIG II. Exploding biscuits can do a lot of damage to the inside of a refrigerator. I don't know if such a sound would carry through apartment walls. I imagine it could put a crack in drywall. 

I'll have to tell Hick my theory!