I Dig It

[Above photo: Heading for South Brooksville in the fog.]

9 August 2022

If a nearly-82 year old man says he wants to dig a 50 foot long 18 inch deep trench for an EV charger conduit and wire (or for anything else), call the Mental Health Crisis Team.  What possessed me? I am accustomed to doing things myself—-plumbing, tune-ups (in the old days), construction. I didn’t know a laborer to hire, nor did my electrician. I thought it would help give me some shoulder strength as I learn Eskimo rolls in my kayak. And I recall digging ditches or holes for leaching fields, septic tanks, sprinkler systems, and endless fence posts when I was in my late teens and early 20’s. Then in my 60’s, digging alongside others, the 25- 4’ deep x 4’ diameter holes for the concrete piers to support my Maine cabin. And we were pressed since the builders would arrive to frame the house in a few weeks and the piers needed time to cure.

It turns out that I am no longer in my 20’s or, even, 60’s. I returned from the island to Portland 2 days ago, in the midst of a record-smashing heat spell. It was a bit cooler yesterday afternoon as I began to dig across my parking lot. It was impenetrable and I returned to Maine Hardware for a pickax which I used to soften the compacted, rocky soil. With a trenching spade I was able to gradually deepen the ditch until I hit—wood?  Ever the optimist, my first thought was how to equitably distribute the cache of gold doubloons which I’d soon discover in the buried wooden chest.  Sad to say, it was the stump of a hardwood tree, buried in 5 inches of soil squarely in the middle of my path.

Electrical code reminds us that there can be no more than 360 degrees of turn for buried cable from the time it enters the soil until it exits.  Perhaps the electricity becomes confused and heads in the wrong direction or establishes an electrical field that will cause your vehicle to swerve. To understand, I mean deeply, the movement of electrons through a wire challenges many of us. My sister, as a young adult, subscribed to the theory that if you removed a bulb from its socket and turned on the electricity, the latter would flow out into the room. (My brother, Roger, loved to prey on her gullibility, since she, by self-admission, had been pretty awful to her usurper when he was young.) Circling, however warily, around the stump was not an option.

Plus, there was to be a jog between the patio and the edge of the pavement which required not only two 22.5 degree angles but a 3.5 foot long, 18 inch deep tunnel beneath the asphalt. Stumped by the stump, I turned my considerable digging talents to tunneling. [Think of the immense borers used for the Chunnel and how they came from France and England and met, spot on, in the middle.] Pretty quickly I was up to my elbow, working with a trowel at both ends and bumping into huge stones that I couldn’t remove.  Oh, and lying in the dirt, occasionally resting my cheek on the latter, consumed by the futility of it all. What really must have puzzled my neighbors, was when this old man decided that crossing the parking lot was a fool’s mission and I re-filled the ditch, now 12’ deep, demoralized, sweaty, and exhausted.

I re-sited the charger at the gate to my patio, a simple 25’ straight run through sand and gravel with only one granite slab under which to bore. At 6:50 this morning I was hard at it and had the ditch and the post-hole dug by 8:30AM when Ryan, my fit, competent, pony-tailed certified electrical contractor arrived. “That looks great. I’ll take it from here.” Welcome words, indeed. It’s only 11AM but I can’t wait for him to finish and leave so I can take a nap. I suppose that acting on my fantasy that I am still a youngster does make me risible to some, a silly old man.

My brother and his son, with the latter’s wife and a friend, spent a week on the Island. We had fun dining together and found plenty to talk about, although avoiding politics altogether since there could have been some sparks. I am very slow at learning to distinguish between what I can and cannot alter in a person I care about and ignoring the “cannots”. It is good to have goals and that is one for me, with each of my siblings. I am not as dispassionate about ”seeing things differently” as that phrase implies if the issues are really important to me. 

I am so glad to see my daughter as happy as she is.  Her lifestyle is, to say the least, pretty unconventional by my ancient standards—-get your education, get a job and move up or develop a professional identity and deepen it, start a company, marry, 1.7 children, etc. Then I see what a free bird she is, how she constantly thinks about and learns from the world, how she is creative, and, mostly, how she is enjoying her life and doing kind things for her friends. We could use a few more like her, I think.

I’ll shout “Let’s go, Biden!” from the rooftops because the man, is spite of his age, has overseen the passage of amazingly significant legislation during his term, all while the GOP seems apoplectic with rage and desire for revenge, heedless of their best interests. Deprive veterans of health care and disability benefits for illnesses accrued while having to tend military burn-pits? Prevent women’s choice and control of their own bodies? Not support a revival of chip manufacturing in the US? And try, ever so hard, to support the petroleum czars and block climate change legislation? Are you all nuts? Talk about digging, how about your own graves and that of the antediluvian GOP?  Clinging to that leaky boat, rather than swimming to safety on a near shore, seems an exercise in self-annihilation. It is advisable to be on the right side of Progress. 

Imagine, all my whining about digging a ditch one afternoon and the next morning. Most people in the world do hard physical labor much of their lives.

I wonder what was in the safe and what was in Alex Jones’ text messages in addition to a nude photo of his wife he sent to Roger Stone. Did she consent?