“I’m pretty good with a shovel,” I told Gilbert. “I’ll dig the hole.”
We are replacing our main circuit breaker panel, and we have to put in a new grounding system in order to be code compliant. Gilbert’s attempts to drive two 8-foot grounding rods had (unsurprisingly) failed, since there’s solid limestone four or five feet down. I was offering to do the digging for the city’s alternative grounding scheme: a 3 foot x 3 foot steel plate buried three feet down.
On Friday, Gilbert said we could do two smaller plates rather than one big one.
“I’ll dig the holes,” I told him.
I started today at 2:00. The sun had just passed behind the eves of the roof, so I was in the shade.
There was gravel below the loamy garden topsoil, which was not a surprise. And then I hit black clay that made me set my shovel aside. I started using a post-hole digger (a hard way to dig two 1 foot x 2 foot holes).
3:00 came and went. Then 4:00 came. And 5:00.
After 18 inches of black clay, there was another 18 inches of reddish clay. It was grueling work. The clay didn’t fall off of the post-hole digger, but the fair and industrious Trudy came to the rescue, scraping the gunk off the blades so that I wouldn’t have to bend over after each load.
6:00 came and went.
I hit solid rock and bent the blade of my grandfather’s post-hole digger. This is bulky-trash weekend in our neighborhood, and the salvaging/scavanging/recycling trucks have been driving up and down the streets for two days. I was mighty tempted to set the bent post-hole digger out by the curb, but Trudy would have nothing to do with it.
“You can’t get rid of your grandfather’s post-hole digger,” she said.
Ok, but I couldn’t use it, either. So I went begging: first to Ron who has a long rock-bar which sadly is in a shed 30 miles away, and then to Bill who loaned me a rock bar and his heavy-duty post-hole digger.
By the time 8:30 rolled around, the deed was finally done. I could barely speak.
Let’s just say that I might be good with a shovel, but with a post-hole digger in gunk — not so much.