Remember a couple weeks ago, when our enclave was trying to round up funds to fix the gravel roads? A couple days after that, a lady who lives back behind us somewhere, on the other gravel road, asked Hick where he got his rock. She had been quoted a price of $205 for a load, and Hick got his from his buddy, Buddy, for $190. He shared Buddy's info with the lady, who said she wanted to order a load of rock.
Hick had let people know that he got a load on Thursday, and was going to spread it around on Monday. Can't be out tractoring when there's money to be made at his SUS2 (Storage Unit Store 2) on the weekend! It wasn't a big deal, because Buddy dumped it along the main road down by the creek, in the manner of a dump truck dumping: down the middle until the rock ran out. As people drove over it, the rock would spread to the sides, but Hick was going to blade the road to spread the rock evenly, and fill in some low spots.
Either Friday or Saturday, as I went to town, I saw a lady on a Bobcat (the machine, not the beast) spreading Hick's rock. I called to tell him and he said, "That's fine. Then I won't have to do it!" So he was not possessive in the least. I said it looked like more rock than I'd noticed on Thursday, and he said maybe that lady had gotten her own rock, and was spreading both.
Anyhoo... I put T-Hoe's window down and slowed to thank her, but she didn't even stop! Granted, she was wearing sound-canceling headphones, and had both hands full steering and moving the blade. But she WAS facing me, and could see what I was doing. I gave her a thumbs-up, still with no reaction. Oh, well. I tried to show my appreciation anyway, so that's on her.
When I started to town THIS Saturday, I saw a surprise at the bottom of Hick and Buddy's Badly Blacktopped Hill:
That is certainly an odd place to leave a load of gravel! This is where our gravel road joins the main gravel road, that runs from the back entrance two miles to the left, to the main entrance by Mailbox Row, about a half mile to the right.
Anybody coming from the left, and trying to turn up our gravel road, would have to maneuver around that pile of gravel. Hopefully not at night, unexpectedly! There are no street lights in the middle of nowhere.
Coming back home, I got another view of the pile:
I take a left to go up Hick and Buddy's Badly Blacktopped Hill to get home. Going forward would take me past our other property atop the hill, and on out to the other entrance on a different blacktop road. Ne'er-do-wells like to use our roads to cut five or six miles off their travels, and toss trash all willy-nilly out their windows.
It looks like somebody might have taken a bit off the top while I was gone to town!
Anyhoo... when I left for town on Sunday, the pile was gone. It had been spread up the hill I'm sitting on to take that last picture. It's a beast to climb when the roads are icy, and it gets muddy in the rains. So that was a good use of this gravel.
Now we only need the other 32 families to contribute...
With everybody buying loads of gravel for the roads and driveways several times a year, do you think one day your country might not have any gravel left? Where does it all come from? Surely the source is not infinite?
ReplyDeleteThe source is pretty infinite around here! The gravel comes from quarries. We are sitting on bedrock. They just break it up and truck it out and sell it. The quarry on the way to Newmentia is a couple hundred feet deep. I don't know how many years it's been operating.
DeleteThere's a cut-through on the highway going past it, a hundred or more feet tall on each side of the road. This ain't the prairie! We have shale and granite and limestone and basalt and dolomite. A variety of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks.
When we got gravel for the campground we usually got about 6 loads at a time and our delivery guy would open the back just enought to travel through the roads of the park, leaving the gravel pretty much spread in his wake. Then HeWho would hook up a weighted roller to go over and over it to pack it down. THere were piles, as well to be loaded onto different sites to level them out. To make a decent impact you would need a lot more than a coule of loads! It riles me up everytime I think about how much equipment we purchased and left for the A$$hole who took 100 grand off the offer he made and my idiot husband accepted without consulting me!!
ReplyDeleteThat's how it usually gets spread here: down the middle out of the dump truck, and then by a tractor blade to smooth it out. We try to get it right after a rainy day, so it doesn't bounce off the edges, but gets imbedded as cars drive over it.
DeleteMaybe that equipment will break down and cost the rumpushole more than he got out of the twisted deal!