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I was sharing a cold beer with my buddy Fred when the topic of concrete came up. This was inevitable because I had just spent an afternoon busting up a meteorite-size chunk of the stuff that had been laying behind a bush in my back yard for the past 20 years. I was pretty sore.
I started digging around the holder twenty years ago, and soon learned to my horror that the concrete base extended a lot further than I thought. I dug and dug and finally managed to unearth a chunk of concrete about the size of Rhode Island. My young wife, The Lovely Marianne, watched as this drama unfolded and finally asked the inescapable question. “What are you going to do with it?” I waited until I caught my breath and answered. “I’m going to get a bunch of the neighbors and we’re all going to roll it over there,” I pointed to the place in front of which I would shortly thereafter plant a large forsythia bush. “They used to build things as good as they could,” Fred said. “But nowadays, they build things that are just good enough.” He took a sip of his beer. “The guy who used to own your house wanted to make sure his clothesline never tipped over. He didn’t want his clothes to wind up on the ground.” Fred took another sip of beer.
“My point exactly,” Fred said. “They built things as good as they could back then. You rarely see that anymore.” “It took me twenty years to get up the courage to get rid of the thing,” I said, trying to work a kink out of my neck.
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When we bought our home we inherited the world’s ugliest clothesline. It was right in the middle of the yard - one of those inverted beach umbrella things. It had an aluminum pole that dropped innocently enough into the ground. Twenty years ago, when I was much younger and a lot stronger, I decided to get rid of the ugly thing along with its concrete base. The clothesline part was easy; I lifted it right out of its holder and tossed it in the trash. The holder, by the way, was a 1-1/4” steel pipe that wound up going nearly as deep as the clothesline went high.
“Mausoleums aren’t built this well,” I said, rubbing my aching triceps.| Dan Holohan - [Intro] | [Email] | [Website] |
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