Month: May 2006

Oh, sure: Amy & I could have spent Memorial Day at a nice party at Breezy Point, in Brooklyn. But wouldn’t we have even more fun if I spent a second straight day excavating a portion of my backyard? In 88-degree weather?

Okay, we wouldn’t, especially since Amy stayed inside and degreased the stove/grill in the kitchen. But stay home we did, and I actually accomplished my goal of clearing a chunk of land on the corner of our backyard.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any “Before” pictures, largely because I was convinced I would never finish the job. But I found reservoirs of will to go along with my reservoirs of Patrick Ewing-like sweat. So, all you get are a couple of “After” pictures, here and here.

Doesn’t look like much? Well, it measured out to 23 feet by 24 feet, which comes out to about 550 square feet of yard that hadn’t been cleaned in more than 15 years. The thick layer of rotting leaves was a mixed blessing: a lot of the weeds hadn’t laid down deep roots, but those leaves get awfully heavy when they’ve been left for that long and that much rain.

Then there were the rocks, which sure made things difficult. My idea for this patch is to turn it into some sorta garden or zen-palace, so hauling out a bunch of those suckers is necessary. It wasn’t as bad as some of the small trees I had to rip up, since they did lay down some significant roots.

But you guys know I wouldn’t write about this sort of thing unless something funny happened, or if an ex-girlfriend was involved. Fortunately, it’s the former.

See, my father is genetically incapable of disposing of anything in the conventional manner. A few years ago, when he replaced his water-heater, he called me and said, “We can dump it behind the bank building in Ramsey tonight when it’s closed!” I told him that I’d gotten out of the dump-and-run business, and that we should see when bulk-trash day is in his neighborhood. It turned out to be the next day. We still had fun trying to roll the water-heater down his sloped driveway, nearly losing control of it, which would’ve led to the heater bounding across the street and into the neighbors’ front yard.

Which is to say, I had some trepidation about digging up that section of the backyard. This trepidation was warranted. Over the years, it seems Dad dumped a bunch of crap in that relatively small patch of land.

Airplane cables (from our dog’s run when we were kids), metal pipes and tubing from his old HAM radio tower in the backyard, flowerpots, a Sundae Smiley Saucer from McDonalds, cables, rope, shards of glass, and what appears to be a fuel-tank that was filled with rocks.

You read that last one right. I had to get all the rocks, dirt and rust out before I could haul the tank up to the pile o’ junk.

Now, you’d think that a fuel-tank full of rocks would be the piece de resistance for my excavation, but it’s not. No, that honor goes to this:

What’s that? Oh, it’s a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi from about 18 logos ago. If you check out the back of the bottle, you’ll notice it’s still two-thirds filled.

I hope everyone else had a good Memorial Day. I know I’ll remember this one for quite a while, especially if I get tetanus from that damned fuel-tank. . .