SUMMER... Hopefully, fun ahead (Part 83a)

I’d pretty much planned out my Saturday. For the morning I had work to do on both vehicles, cut the lawn and re-anchor the kids swing set. Then, in the afternoon was to go to my parents and get my sailboat out from the garage, find all the pieces and trail it over to the sailing club. It was about 8:30am or so when Dick, one of the owners of the mobile home park, stopped by my car as I was working on it. He came up to me and asked if he could ask a very big favor. Not having any idea of where he was going with it I answered ”probably“. Their new mobile home park was scheduled to open the following weekend and there was still a lot of thing that needed to be done. The itinerant laborers he and his brother had hired to prepare the ground for sodding hadn’t shown up for the past two days. The sod was being delivered on Monday and there was no way it could be laid in the shape the ground was presently in. He was willing to pay $2.50 and hour, almost double what the minimum wage was. A quick calculation in my head said that it was almost what I was making working for the County. I was immediately interested. There was one catch... he wanted me to find a couple of others. I knew Andy wasn’t available as he was working on a private deal with his bulldozer. Jim already had a weekend job so that left Eric, of what could be considered my local friends. I told him I’d see what I could do but in any case that I’d be up there by 9am.

Ever since an axel had been located for my race car I’d been anxious to go and get it. Since Eric was so critical to the project I’d been waiting on him to let me know when he was available. Because he had such a varied schedule at the air base it was very difficult for him to plan too far in advance. I never knew when he was on or off. I walked down the street and, much to my surprise, found him. He was helping his friend who had just moved into Andy’s old unit. He introduced me to Cal. I hate to pidgeonhole people but Cal was definitely one to do it to. He was thinner than me, had a long neck and had ears that stuck out. On first appearances he was definitely a ”rube“. Once he opened his mouth I had to do a double take. He was from Northern Maine and talked like someone from the backwoods. I didn’t say anything and went ahead and told Eric what I was looking for. $2.50 an hour really caught his attention. He’d just got off duty at 6am and was off until midnight but, like me, did a quick calculation and said he’d like to do it. Twenty dollars was twenty dollars. Cal was listening and quickly asked if he could come too. My first thoughts were negative but Dick had asked for as many warm bodies I could gather up so... I said sure.

I’d not been to the new park. I knew that seven or eight of the residents from the old park had taken the ”boys” up on their offer and I’d seen some of them being moved. As we drove in I could see a couple of homes already in place. The first things that grabbed me were that they had off street parking and had trees on their pads (lots). The first section was to have around 80 pads but for the opening they only had 15 or 16. All the streets had been prepared for paving but to save money they had only paved the areas where the pads were ready. It didn’t take much to know what we were supposed to do. There was all kinds of debris scattered around from small tree limbs to clumps of asphalt from the paving and excess cement from the patios. We knew we had our work cut out for us.

Cal surprised me and was a no nonsense hard worker. Dick brought us lunch and by mid afternoon we’d gotten about half of the pads ready to have the sod laid. It wasn’t long after that that Eric and I heard what could be called “music” to our ears. The stock car track was about a half mile away and at 4pm practice started. We both had the same thought... let’s go to the races when we’re done. But, reality, especially for Eric, took hold. We figured that we’d be done around somewhere around 7pm. Eric hadn’t had any sleep in about 24 hours and wanted to get at least a few hours before reporting to duty. I knew Elle wasn’t that crazy about me being gone all day, especially with none of the things I’d planned being done. She wouldn’t let the kids on the swing set until I’d anchored it better than it was. Cal, who was newly married, wanted to go home for a very obvious reason. The races had to wait... again.

Sunday I was up early. I still had to get the boat ready and the races started at 1pm. Elle was grumbling about leaving so early right from the time we got up so I told her I’d go alone and she could come along later. That solved that problem. Once at my parents things went a little better. My father was very anal and had a habit of keeping everything, especially empty boxes. I knew that over the Winter my boat had become the shelf for them. When I got into the garage, there were no boxes. Absolute shock! I was able to locate all the necessary parts and loaded them up. By mid morning I was on the way to the sailing club.

To be continued...