"The Other End is in New Market"

I had lunch with the Old Commissioner Friday and that brought this story to mind. Allz I can say is "there I wuz ..." - OMG

The Other End is in New Market

The three of us stood on a dirt mound watching the hole at home plate just get bigger and bigger. Up to this point, the job had been pretty routine. We were building a baseball field and some tennis courts at that new park out in Four-Way. The only glitches so far had been Ed The Architect’s penchant for positioning boulders as decorations in the parking lot and the time Wayne’s D-5 dozer had plowed into a long-dead and buried cow. That last had ended work for the day and we all repaired to Lightnin’s Place across the highway to alleviate the stench with a couple of coldbeers.

Me? Well, I was only about six months removed from my college career during which my only real accomplishment had been to qualify for an endowed chair at The Tennessean on The Strip. My only decision of any consequence during that time was, “bottle or draft?” Now, by the strange and mysterious machinations of local politics, I owned the rather grandiose title of Project Manager. It was one of the many hats I’d found myself wearing recently ... and it fit a little tight around the shoulders. But there I was, representing the County and the decisions were mine.

I found myself liking all of the guys from the foreman and the equipment operators to the civil engineers that had been rooked into turning Ed’s drawings into little posts inscribed with numbers telling the operators how much to cut and fill and where. Clint was the foreman and was prototypical for the group, he was in his mid-thirties with an easy, open way about him, a bone-deep sunburn and a missing index finger on his left hand.

Todd was on his D-9, a fifty-ton mass of rompin’, stompin’ dirt-moving yellow steel from the Caterpillar factory in Peoria. He was trying to pry that rock we had struck yesterday from the red clay. Todd was about my age but he handled his charge with the deft touch of a hooker separating a John from his paycheck on a Friday night. The hole at home plate was now bigger than the dozer. Todd would try to wedge his fifteen foot blade under a corner of the rock and then use Caterpillar Hydraulics to lift it. Unfortunately, the only thing that was lifting was the back of the machine, up … and up … and hold … and … BAM! he’d move the lever and let the rear of the machine crash back on its tracks with an impact that shook the ground. Then he’d move a little to one side and with a belch of Diesel smoke and red dust, try again.

Clint and I stood watching this little dance with Pete, one of the civil engineers. We passed a bag of Red Man around like dopers sharing a joint. Chewing tobacco is damn near a necessity on a construction site, it cuts the dust and keeps you awake in the heat. I was a novice “chawer,” generally unable to get through the day without at least one stain on my shirt. Clint reflected his fifteen years in the trade with his ability to carry on a conversation, spit and measure a cut in one motion. Pete, though, put him to shame. By far the oldest guy on the site, he could fire a stream of tobacco juice with the accuracy of an unreconstructed Southern senator. He’d selected a small rock as his target today and was shooting a three inch group from ten feet, but then there was a breeze blowing from the west.

“Ya know,” Clint began, “we may just have to shoot that thing.” He shot a blackbrown stream, raised an eyebrow, and looked at me.

“What’s that mean?” I asked, immediately betraying my rookie status.

With only a hint of condescension he said, “Blow it … dynamite it.”

“Oh.” I said, “How long will that take?”

Clint answered, “Well, let’s see…’

Now, I had already learned that phrase was contractor-speak for “expensive.”

“… we’ll have to bring in a drill rig and a shooter. It’ll be the first part of next week.”

Great. Now what? The Commissioner was already on me to get this thing done and our grant money was just about gone. Now here comes yet another machine and operator at a couple of hundred-dollars-an-hour. Clint and I then began some back-and-forth as to whether that was really necessary. Then Pete said, “Hang on a minute, boys, let me check something.”

Pete left us and strolled over to his government-issue pickup and rummaged around in the cab, emerging with a rolled map which he then spread out on the hood. Pete looked for all the world like some ancient scribe with a parchment as he spent the next few minutes studying the map and making tracings with his finger. Then he rolled up the map and rejoined us on the dirt pile. On the way back he nailed a rusted bottle cap without breaking stride.

Gesturing with his rolled-up map at the hole, which was bigger than the bulldozer, and the exposed rock which was bigger than both he fired a stream into the hole and delivered his judgment.

“Boys, you can do what you want…”

That’s Southern code for, “If you don’t take my advice you’re dumber than you look.”

“…but near as I can figure the other end of that rock,” he now used the roll to point more or less northeast, “is about seven miles away in New Market.”

“Oh.”

Clint then pronounced his benediction on the “hole” affair. “Well, Hell, I’ll get that drill and the powder man here Monday.” He squinted toward the lowering sun and thought for a moment, then made a winding motion over his head. “Let’s shut 'er down and go see if Lightnin’s run out of coldbeer yet.”