julia_lee•1mo agoTop Commenter

The day we dredged up a whole sunken picnic table

We were working the cutterhead on the old Columbia River channel near Longview, and the bucket brought up what we thought was a huge log. Turned out to be a full wooden picnic table, benches and all, wrapped in about 50 feet of old anchor chain. Took us three hours to cut it all free without stopping the whole operation. Has anyone else pulled up something that ridiculous from the mud?

3 comments

3 Comments

olivia_allen1mo ago

Wait, you guys had to cut it free for three hours while still running the dredge? How do you even manage that without everything grinding to a halt? That sounds like a nightmare of tangled chain and splinters. What did you even do with a waterlogged picnic table after all that?

danielw881mo ago

Yeah the "nightmare of tangled chain and splinters" part is pretty spot on. What gets me is how this kind of thing happens way more often than people think, not just with dredging but with everyday stuff too. It's like that old saying about how fixing one problem just uncovers two more beneath it. Life's got a way of piling on the unexpected, whether it's a picnic table in a dredge or a fallen tree that snags your fence line. You just gotta keep chipping away at it until the mess sorts itself out.

fisher.adam1mo ago

Honestly Olivia, I used to think that too until we had to cut a whole picnic table out of the works.