HOLES IN MY MEMORY

8/5/98
With the radio playing a country song, I'm waiting in my truck
for a material delivery once again. This one is for a deck job
that's just two houses down from the one where I grew up.


My father paid only two thousand dollars for that house back
in '67. He remodeled the neglected two story addition over the
next several years, trying to earn a second income and provide
a retirement plan. Uncle Louie and his family lived there for
five years, helping to pay the mortgage.
 

Dad set up an antique shop he called Serendipity on the ground
floor when our relatives found a place of their own. Treasure hunting
through yard sales, flea markets and even old dumps provided
most of the inventory.
  

My brothers and I had a bicycle repair shop in it after that.
As we outgrew the main house, we spread to the upstairs of this
side. There were only three rooms upstairs, one very large and
two closet-sized. At first, we all had separate beds in the big
room while using the small ones for toys, clothes and other junk
that boys collect. The furnishings were found in many of the same
places the antiques came from. Our centerpiece and the hub
of personal spaces was an old wire spool converted to a game
table. Huddled around it on mismatched chairs we played
checkers, chess, monopoly, rummy and poker. The little rooms
were eventually claimed in order of decreasing age, I was
second eldest.
 

I can see the window to my old room, it brings back many
forgotten memories. My retreat was tiny, only about eight by ten
feet. I'd divided it with an American flag to hide my bed, a
single mattress on the floor. A sloped ceiling was painted in
florescent artwork that would glow when I turned on the black light.
The walls were covered in rock and roll posters. A beaded
curtain warned me if anyone entered...when my headphones weren't
cranked up too loud. The Beatles and the Stones, Joplin and the
Byrds were blended with softer, more romantic musicians once I
fell for a blue-eyed-blond in the school bus seat ahead of me.





Gin and I hid from the rest of the world there in that room.
Bobby Goldsboro's 'Watching Scotty Grow' provided the name of
our future son. Bread and Neil Diamond were added to the collection
of eight tracks.


The downstairs reverted back to an apartment when Gin and I
were married in '74. My younger brothers now ruled the floor above.
If our son cried, my entire family heard it. Two years was enough,
we moved. Dad sold the house in '83 when he and my mother divorced.


Here comes the lumber truck. Time to get to work. The driver
helps unload the building material then I start digging the holes
for the posts. I have dug hundreds of holes in my twenty-odd
years as a carpenter. Some were done with rented machines; a
back hoe, a tractor with an auger on a three point hitch, or with
a gasoline powered hand-held auger. Others, like these I'm
digging today, were hand dug with only a post-bar, shovel,
and a set of post-hole diggers.





Half-way down to the 42 inch mark, the depth of the frost line
in northeast Pennsylvania, I need to pause and catch my breath.
All the methods of digging a hole for a post have their drawbacks;
a back hoe will dig a quick hole but the backfilling takes
time and never gets compacted as good as it was, sometimes leaving
a hollow as it settles. When backfilling such a hole,
the earth needs to be tamped every foot or so as it's added,
compromising the time saved. When using a tractor powered auger,
the driver can't tell when it drills off-plumb. A helper needs
to watch and relay the vertical state of the machine. As
with the hand-held auger, if a large rock is hit shear pins can
break, causing lost time if extras aren't on hand. The hand-held
auger takes two people to run it and will twist your arms worse
than a pro wrestler. With added labor and rental fees, these
methods do add a considerable sum to the bid.


To dig with hand tools can be tiresome, for sure, but the
hole will be small enough to stand a post up in it without bracing,
the backfilling can be tamped with the end of a 2x4 and will pack
down very solid, and the hole will be vertical. From the customer's
point of view this is the favorite choice, as the bid will be much cheaper.


I start the hole with a shovel, cutting the sod in a 12 inch
circle and removing it. Then I use my post-bar to stab and pry
the dirt at the edge of that circle, a chisel-pointed bar is best.
Use the straight edge to cut a vertical line, then turn it to
pry the dirt toward the center of the hole, it will loosen the soil
for the post-hole diggers. This specialty tool is not meant for
digging with. It is meant only to remove loose soil from the hole.
The tips will bend if they hit rocks, and eventually break
from hammering them back into shape. I have three broken sets
of them in the barn, take my word for it.


The first hole done, I think to myself, "That was easy," and
start the next. Oh, oh, a root. Worse than finding a rock if not
prepared for them. I am, and get out my trusty Sawz-all.
The wrist-sized root is out of there in no time, the remainder of
the digging goes smooth. Still a couple hours of daylight, I start
the next hole. I should have known there'd be another root. No
problem, I cut both ends and try to pull it out. It won't budge.
I dig around it with my hands until finding the problem, it's
branched with a vertical root heading straight down the
center of my hole. I cut the root at both sides of the branch and
then clear the hole out again with my hands. Using the post bar
as a chisel, I slice the root into a dozen slivers before it
finally breaks away to reveal a basketball shaped rock! I pack
up my tools and head for home, Gin and I have some memories to relive.