It’s always good to have an ace in the hole. But a dump truck?
A truck was delivering a load of dirt to a restaurant construction site off Morristown’s DeHart Street on Wednesday afternoon when suddenly…the parking lot opened up and swallowed the vehicle.
The driver was not injured and, apparently, neither was the dump truck, which drove away Thursday after a tow truck hauled it from the sinkhole.
The incident occurred behind the Tashmoo Bar & Restaurant, a staging area for another restaurant being built next door by the Tashmoo owners.
Employees at Braunschweiger Jewelers were working in their back shop, which overlooks the parking lot, when they heard a loud clang on Wednesday, recounted jeweler Rich Grohoski. At first they thought a truck was offloading another load of dirt, he said.
The truck’s driver declined to comment at the scene on Thursday.
The giant hole exposed what appears to be a brick-lined cistern or sewer from yesteryear.
“It’s a little freaky,” David Walsh, one of the principals in Tashmoo, said of the episode.
“But it’s all right. We’re getting through it,” he said.
The unnamed new restaurant, on the site of a house nobody wanted, has been on the drawing board for years. Walsh said he’s hopeful it will open next spring.
