Thelma and Willie Perryman spend most days out front of their family trailer in rural Alabama, shooting the breeze while enjoying the birdsong – and making sure their three-year-old grandson doesn’t wander into the sewage-sodden back yard.
They used to barbecue on the back porch looking out at the woods on their land until a couple of years back when the contaminated wastewater seeping out from a leaky old pipe got simply unbearable. Willie, 71, ripped out the sinking porch as branches began falling off a towering old hickory tree which is now completely dead and at risk of toppling.
