Sunday, June 17, 2007

Let's call it....Gravel Archaeology


It all began with some buckets and piles and piles of gravel.

Shaolin-monkin aside, the project began as it normally does with my grand father.

"Can you help me haul some gravel?"

The concept of "Some" seems to be a comparative term that is used in reference to the atomic mass of the Milky Way Galaxy.

So, at 8:30 this morning, I went over to my grand dad's for "Father's Day" and quickly realized that 'Some' was going to come and bite me on the ass once more. I should have known that there was SOMEthing up because he asked a similar question last summer and I ended up breaking up 'some' concrete, digging out tree roots, playing with chain saws and then pouring concrete to replace a WHOLE sidewalk.

Each bucket was originally 5 gallons of something. With all the gravel it felt like 50 lbs on average. So, the seven buckets were filled with gravel and loaded into my grand dad's van so that they could be transported to my house. Then, since his van couldn't drive up my driveway, I ended up hauling the buckets up my driveway to fill the trench.

So, each trip was seven buckets of gravel and there were multiple trips. Yes, that's a lot of gravel.

So then, once I had most of the gravel hauled away, it became an issue that there were piles and piles of dead sod from the new drainage ditch that needed to be loaded up in buckets so that they could eventually be ditched over on Hamilton. Once the sod was loaded, I took a rake to the side yard to gather the last of the gravel and loose dirt so that it wouldnj't damage the lawn mower.

So, using a push broom, a rake, a hoe and such the yard was cleaned. Before I was done, I used the hose and the push broom to clean any speck of dirt from the neighbor's driveway in case the new ditch happened to put some dirt there.

And then, I came home.

Ugh.

Thankfully "Grand"-father's day is only once a year. My mother's husband doesn't get squat from me.

Nap time.

Later.

-Tom

2 comments:

Emeleth said...

So where does the archeology come in?? I thought you were going to say you found something cool under all that digging... *harumph*

D. Gilbert Trout said...

So Tom,

You wanna give me a hand with moving this weekend? This isn't the main move to the new house. We're only hauling a few things down to my Mom and Dad's for storage...

(like the "Some Gravel," these few things consist of a Washer and Dryer, located upstairs, a stove, a dishwasher, an antique china cabinet, and of course, the antique upright piano.)