Stories
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It was rugged work digging those trenches in June mostly spade work but the ground was soft and the biggest problem was the tree roots of which I had to cut and slash them with a spade. June warm and the smell of loam and clay. I dug with the spade and scooped the dirt out with an oval head shovel, and got my first calluses on my hands.
After the ditches were dug - they had to be bedded or lined with small white smooth stone about the size of flatter wallnuts, which I had to wheel barrow from the parking lot where a pile had been dumped; then twenty yards up the walk-bridge, across, down, then the narrow park another twenty-five yards, thru the hedges up a short hill to the back porch, and then around the house and dump it into the trenches.
Shovel white stone into the wheel barrel, haul it over onto the island. Lift the barrel and tumble the stone into the trench and then even it out with a shovel. And when that was done, I had-to with the wheel barrel haul orange ceramic tile pipe over and lay it fitted end to end on the gravel for the length of the trenches, and then haul over roofing shingles and place some part of a shingle over the joints. Almost done then I had to refill the trenches by shovelling the dirt back all done. Now I am not sure about the new grass. My grandfather had a small pump in a pump house on the west side down at the lake to water the lawn all summer. Of course before winter the compressioned water tank had to be drained as well as all the pipes or they would freeze-burst in winter.
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