Nov 14th - Work in Tennessee

It has been a few days more than 2 months since my last blog post. For much of that time it was to hot for me to want to even venture out of the house, let alone get involved in an outside work project.

A few weeks ago I did start rerouting and installing new foundation drains and downspout drains. No major excavations, nothing more than 12" deep trenches, but in HARD, DRY, clay laced with tree roots. I'm not finished but one event that some of you have already been told about, should cause a smile, and maybe some reflection.


The ''event".  While working on the downspout drains I pulled my trailer up near the work area. My tractor has a ball mounted on top of the front end loader bucket. I had thrown a couple of 60# bags of Sackrete in the front of the trailer to put some weight on the tongue. Being lazy I just drove up to the trailer and set the tongue on the ball on the bucket, but didn't lock it down. When I got to the section of driveway that runs in front of the house the trailer popped off the ball, careened down the driveway and smashed into the front of Kathy's van. It knocked a hole in the plastic bumper which we had spent $850 replacing just a few months ago, but nothing catastrophic.

 I hitched the trailer back up to the tractor and moved it to where I wanted it to set. Mind you, I'm doing this because I had a goal set for where I wanted to be before it rained Wed afternoon/evening. The rain was not supposed to start until around 6PM so I was still doing OK. I also had thrown another 3 60# bags of Sackrete in the front of the trailer. I unhitched the trailer so that I could go get some stone to use in a small retaining wall I was building to direct water to the new catch basin. Then around 3:30 we got a shower, rain on the dirt and Sackrete on the trailer. I didn't want the Sackrete to get wet so I hurriedly hooked the trailer up to the ball in the tractor draw bar and even locked it in place with a pin to keep it from opening up. I headed for the shed where I park the tractor, got maybe 50' up the hill and the trailer popped off the ball. Down the hill it went, over the satellite dish, down about a 4' rock retaining wall and smashed into our 2 year old AC/heat pump compressor. Before I managed to get the trailer back on level ground it quit raining. I don't know why this happened, maybe just my carelessness. I did take comfort from the verse telling me that this type of thing will happen and it wasn't worth my getting all upset.

 On Nov 11th I drove to TN. Kathy did not come along. She didn't think she was up to a 10-11 hour trip in my truck. The trip was uneventful, other than a huge traffic jamb right after I crossed the state line into TN. As much as I love eating breakfast at any one of 3 restaurants in Crossville I haven't made it to town for breakfast yet. I've had to struggle making my own breakfast each morning.

Friday Marvin, a neighbor who is a great carpenter, and I started construction on a storage building for me. By Friday evening we had 9 holes dug for posts and had a load of rock delivered.

Saturday there was a benefit for Delmar Burgess, a neighbor who had a bad stroke several months ago. I went over for breakfast and was astounded at the turnout, small town America at its best. After breakfast I borrowed Tom's trailer and got a load of wood. In the evening I went back over to have supper at the benefit. The parking lot was full & their was a huge crowd waiting in line. I counted 35 vehicle parked along the road, just on one side of the road. I came home and fixed me some supper. Today I heard that they raised well over $20,000. AWESOME!

Today Marvin nearly worked me to death <GRIN>. We got the poles set & plumbed and the "band boards" around the bottom of the posts.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to continue the framing.