Flashback Friday #216

Building A Garage


Hello. It's good to see you here on this Friday (can you believe that I got this post out on time?). Today my discussion rests upon a garage that Dad was planning to build. We had plenty of land, so why not build a garage/workshop on it?

What's the first thing you need to do? Um, Digging a hole for the foundation would be nice. Do you think I was going to volunteer to dig it? Idon'tthinkso! That's the nice think about having lots of friends. Dad knew someone that not only had a backhoe, but also was skilled in using it. That just happened to be Uncle Phil (Aunt Shelly's husband).

Uncle Phil drove his backhoe over and began digging. If we had lived far away, he would have put the backhoe on a trailer and brought it over. Since we only lived about three miles away, he felt like driving it. He was making good time until he hit an obstacle. He had run into our "basement home" that we had lived in for a year before we purchased the adjoining property (and house) we currently abode (this is where I lived when I had my teeth ripped out). Once we bought the new property, we abandoned the basement home and moved into the house. We filled the basement home up with trash and buried it.

Anyway, Uncle Phil's claw had snagged an old freezer that we had tossed. He asked if he could have it for scrap metal and Dad said he could. Now that he knew he was traversing a "mine field", he was a little more careful.

Once the footer hole was dug, cad called the local concrete company to come out and pour concrete. He made sure he took the day off so he would be there to make sure nothing went wrong. Perhaps he should have gone to work instead.

When the truck got there, Dad motioned it into place and the concrete came pouring out. I had just gotten home from school when the truck began. Dad grabbed a shovel to smooth out the top of the foundation. It was difficult to do from up top, so Dad took off his socks and shoes, rolled up his pants legs and hopped into the wet concrete. He was smoothing it out for about five minutes and he jumped out and ran over to the garden hose. He sprayed his legs off just as fast as he could. He didn't realize that there was a type of acid that was in the concrete to help it cure. It burned his legs something terrible.

Well, by the time he got patched up and was able to put weigh on his feet again, the concrete had hardened enough to make smoothing out the top impossible. He got the foundation laid, but never finished that garage.