The Old House Gets Demolished

Wreckage With A Backhoe

The university was always buying up all the older houses on the periphery of the campus, especially if it was in a direction in which they already planned to expand. I don't recall that anyone explained much about why they set me to pulling down the empty old house with the backhoe. I guess it saved manpower to set me at the task—they knew I'd stay at it, with or without any laborers to help. I assumed that the utilities were turned off just as had been the case at other old structures I'd torn down or pushed down at the university.

Mice In The Pampas Grass

I cleared a large area around the house first, including half a dozen or so pampas grass plants. Those bushes are harder to dig out than you'd think. I'd dug up trees elsewhere on campus, sometimes creating holes where I could have buried a Volkswagen before the root systems would turn loose. So I felt like my medium-sized tractor could eventually dig out the pampas grass, too. Their root balls were moderately large, but extremely dense and contained a basketful of mice each. I got to where I'd use the bucket to beat at the root ball and try to smack the mice as they ran out of it. My aim was pretty accurate, I thought, but the terrified mice could outrun the long hydraulic boom every time. It was amazing to me how many mice could hide out in one of those root balls and how long some of them would remain, either brave enough or frightened enough to not come out with the first disturbed mouse or two. Sometimes I'd see mice creep out of it even after I'd tossed it aside and started to work on the next one. I suppose you can begin to see here why later I didn't mind too much my murderous work as a pest exterminator.

Bringing Down The House

So I proceeded to pull the walls and roof in on the outer portions—the front porch area and the laundry room on the east side. I moved slowly though, just to be cautious. Because the loader/backhoe was needed for other scheduled work, I sometimes only worked at the house demolition job an hour or two at a time.

When the piles of debris got large enough, they sent my sweat-and-alcohol scented buddy Roy over with the dump truck and I'd scoop up all the loose debris until the pile was small. Then Roy alone or the two of us would shovel up the remains. Sometimes Roy would wrestle the difficult stuff—lengths of pipe or a refrigerator, perhaps—into the loader, sometimes chaining it to the bucket just well enough that I could flip the bucket and get it balanced. Then Roy unhooked the chain and I dumped it into the big truck. Eventually it all went to the city dump. I'm happy to say that I never "almost killed" Roy, though I worried about it sometimes.

Roy Brings Himself Down

I don't know if his courage was a product of his recklessness or of his confidence in the equipment operator. Eventually, I guess, it was based on both his courage and his confidence in me. But he was a reckless and temperamental man. He later was fired, not once, but twice, from the university. Some lawyer got Roy rehired, I never knew the details of that. The second time he was fired, he'd been operating a weed-eater grass trimmer and got mad at it for not working. He was then observed by a supervisor who already didn't like him to lift the trimmer above his head and crash it down hard to the sidewalk. Roy did often have a temper problem, but he'd never turned it on me, so I liked him. As long as he did show up for work, Roy was a seriously strong and hard-working man!

Breaking The Gas Line, Slinging The Gas Can

Eventually I got prideful of how well I operated the equipment, but one of the last days that I worked at pulling down the old house, I hooked the digging edge of the bucket down into a pile of debris behind the concrete doorsteps and broke the damn gas line, I felt quite different about the whole thing.

I got so scared about that noisy hissing of gas that I panicked, turned off the diesel engine, and leapt away, breathing hard. I got into a panic. What the hell was I supposed to do?! There were some laborers nearby and I got Ike to let me borrow their dilapidated truck so I could phone the dispatcher and get them to send a plumber over. I was more revved up that hour than the old truck had been in many a year and as I took off a one-gallon gas can slid out of the truck bed and into the street behind me. It only lost a little gasoline. I kept going, but I glanced in the mirror and saw Ike grinning and shaking his head like I was a crazy man as he slowly walked into the street to retrieve the gas can. I bounced along until I found a phone, made my call, and returned to the scene of the crime.

Stopgap Measure

When the plumber, Rick, arrived, he just grinned, sauntered over, eyeballed the pipe, then returned to his truck for a hammer and a piece of wood. He used his pocketknife to whittle the stake down a little at one end, then pounded it into the pipe opening until he was satisfied there was no leak.

"Well, if I'd known that…" I muttered.

"Yeah," Rick said. "Nothin' to it."

That's one of the definitions of "stopgap measure" I've learned in my life.

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