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Once home, I grappled the three bags into the backyard, got myself a bucket and a hose and started mixing with great enthusiasm. I troweled, smoothed and leaned back with satisfaction. I called The Lovely Marianne and the kids out to see what I’d done. She smiled; so did the kids. Then I had a beer. Night fell. My concrete wasn’t hardening as it should and The Lovely Marianne was the first to notice. She mentioned it to me. I took a long look at the concrete, probed it with a cautious finger, and told her not to worry; it would be fine in the morning.
"Don’t be silly," I said. "It always looks like that before it sets up." But it did look an awful lot like sand. Days passed. I kept sticking my finger in my "concrete" while The Lovely Marianne smiled. She had a vicious gleam in her eyes, but she said nothing. A week later, my "concrete" walk still had the consistency of Jones Beach.
But you know what stays with me? The Lovely Marianne never told anyone about The King of Concrete. She didn’t even laugh at me. She just smiled with that private and very wicked gleam in her eyes. The gleam said, "Gotcha!" But she never told anyone about the dopey kid who spent a week laying a sand walkway. She’s wiser than I am. That’s one of the reasons why I love the woman.
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"You know," she said, "it looks like sand to me.
It turns out I’d paid $15 for 240 pounds of sand. The same stuff you can get for free at any Long Island beach. I’d bought it, lugged it, mixed it, troweled it, smoothed it, stood back and looked at it, drank a few beers to it, stuck my finger in it. I did this for a week. And never once did I read the bag. The bag read, "SAND" in six-inch-high red letters.| Dan Holohan - [Intro] | [Email] | [Website] |
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