Beatin' Me Like a Yard Dog


Well, it's literally high noon - clock time, not solar time .  .  . that happens about an hour from now.  I'm still sitting inside, windows open, ceiling fan turning, not yet either ceiling fan, much less air conditioner.  Trying to puzzle out this word-processor.

Looking out the window at the Big Blue Bus.  It's not Big Sally II yet.  Saturday morning I                                                                                 
broke up half of one of the three slabs that were under Mr. Moore's Meat Market in the back yard.  It took me four loads in the Ranger to get them all out to our acres on County Highway B outside Goodman.  I was so charged up that I was up till eleven reading a Bill Mauldin autobiography before I slowed down enough to crater.

First half gone.
Second half artistically broken up.
Come Sunday morning, I waited for the observant to get off to their respective churches before I charged back out to attack the remainder of that slab.  At it hammer and tongs, well, at least hammer and gloves and a crowbar.  And I got it done.  Then I went back out when the afternoon cooled a little and attacked the monolithic (look that one up) front step.  That puppy is six feet long, four feet wide, and at least sixteen inches deep.  I couldn't get my tape all the way to the bottom; it had sunk several inches into the dirt over they years.  That works out to 4,500 pounds of love and romance and sweat and swearing.  That's big enough to be a mooring block for maybe not for a destroyer, but probably a PT boat.

Assuming the position for chucking ...
Chiseling off the corners took over twenty minutes for just that much.  That was when I moved over to start the second slab (eight inches thick) and broke the spade point on the hammer.  Hey; I can take a hint.  So I stopped jackhammering, loaded up the pickup and hauled a load of urbanite to the acres.  Getting that load on and off the truck was what finally whupped up on this boy, and that's when I came indoors, washed my face and hands and cratered at 7:PM last night.

 Today I'm pretty much taking a day off; it's hot, and I'm tired.
I've scraped an inspection sticker off the door window, and I'll take at least one load of broken rock out to the acres . . . there's a spot where the creek's trying to gnaw a bite out of the road.  I'm putting in a filling to slow the process down.
Corner hammered off the warship mooring stone.


 Life is good.

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