KELLER, Texas — Some Keller maintenance workers dug up pieces of a skateboard from potentially 50 years ago Friday, something that the city said is "not completely shocking."
The public works team from Keller has had a continual pressure issue with a fire hydrant in the 800 block of South Main Street near Wall-Price-Keller Road.
Maintenance workers had been unable to fully shut off flow to the hydrant, and despite replacing various pieces of it, they continued to deal with pressure and leaking issues. Workers eventually decided to dig it up.
In the process, they found pieces of a red skateboard with yellow wheels underneath the fire hydrant. The skateboard is believed to be from around the 1970s, according to city officials.
The reasoning behind this assumption ties back to when the 27-inch water line was originally installed in 1972.
Back around this time period, construction workers would use skateboards to travel the interior of water pipes to inspect welds and joints. Now that technology has advanced, the city's construction workers use cameras on wheels controlled by some form of a remote control.
So while the city says it's not "completely shocking" to find a skateboard in the water line, it was a "surprising" and delightful" discovery.
The city said its public works employees compared it to finding a towel in a patient who had an operation years ago and recently started having issues that warranted further investigation.
Most impressively, at some point in the last 50 years, city officials said the skateboard broke into pieces and moved from the 27-inch water line into the 6-inch water line that serves the fire hydrant, even navigating a 90-degree turn.
When we reached out to Keller's public information officer to double-check this wasn't an April Fool's Joke, she told WFAA:
"Haha yes, it’s legit! I double-checked with my director, too, to make sure they weren’t punking ME."
And in Texas fashion, the city of Keller finished its Facebook post with, "Happy Friday, y’all."
