Twentynine Palms, 2010 - June 22

 

Today we kind of recuperate from yesterday’s exertions, and also kind of stick around while Steve Bowden and a new helper go after the “porch” by the studio, setting joists and placing fascia board around the perimeter.

Steve didn’t arrive till 11am, and by that time Newt had decided he wanted to do some more “ranching” and him and I were well into our project for the day, which consisted of providing an enclosure for the outdoor shower that lives right behind the Hell Trailer.

First order of business was to locate and dig holes sufficient to take six foot tall, four by six, scrap lumber posts left over from the original homesteader shack that graced this property when Newt first bought it.

Shovel work in the heat of the desert is an interesting proposition, and is something I’ve never done before, so I had fun with it in my goddamned new boots, sweating profusely and cursing the hardpan soil that stubbornly fought back against all efforts to get a sensible hole dug into it. Newt and I both worked shovels, and alternated with the heavy bar as the depth of the holes progressed, to jab the hard-packed dirt into submission so that the shovels could do their thing, removing more dirt and deepening the hole.

Eventually, seven new holes, about a foot and a half deep and maybe a foot across, straight-sided, appeared around the shower.  It’s all being done by eyeball, and has a satisfyingly rough-hewn look to it.

Cathy, who desires the enclosure the most, is enlisted as quality control, and pronounces the work so far to be worthy, so Newt and I move on to the next phase of our little construction project.

Now let’s see about posts, shall we?

So we rooted around in the scrap pile and found ourselves a few fifteen foot pieces that looked like they’d do, and cut ourselves what we needed from them, six foot long each.

Which is when Steve and his new helper, who was neither female nor particularly good-looking, showed up right as the saw blade was whining into the wood.

Once cut, Newt produced a can of mastic, and that got applied to the portion of each post that will reside below ground level.

Drive to town and get some ready-mix concrete. Eight bags, sixty pounds each.

Come back and I go to locate some flimsy stuff to use as temporary braces, and Newt readies the wheelbarrow and hose for the ready-mix.

The sun blazed down from the without-cloud sky, as the heat continued to swell.

Concrete mix under way, first post set into the hole, leveled, and temporary supports nailed into place.

Pour, level again, tamp, level again, curse, mix, bang temporary supports on the next post, grunt, curse, level, curse, relevel, pour, tamp, bang temporary supports on the next post, curse, stand post in hole, post falls over, curse again, louder this time, and on and on it goes.

Yep, we’re ranching today. No doubt about it.

At last, right as the final drops in the bottom of my water bottle disappeared, the seventh post is set, poured, leveled, and propped, and goddamn motherfucker but we’re done with this thing. The Eyeball Engineering works perfectly, right on down to the quantity of ready-mix, which does the job perfectly with no overage, and no underage, either. And it’s got just the right artistically rustic eye appeal, too.

With the heat of noon really beginning to gather form and substance, it was a good time to go inside the house and breath some conditioned air for a little bit.

So that’s what we did.

Outside, the concrete is setting and tomorrow maybe we’ll put the actual sheet metal enclosure on the posts.


   

And then, around 6pm, I just decided to leave the Hell Trailer and see what was outside. Shadows were lengthening, and there was nobody stirring, except for Ripley the tortoise in his pen, intently watched by Stella. Ripley seemed a bit restless, and did several constrained slow-motion orbits of his hemmed-in universe, seemingly looking for something, but I do not know what. Stella gazed intently at him the whole time, while Bonzo moved over to the northeast corner of the studio, and became astoundingly interested in what appeared to be nothing at all, in a small place just large enough for his head to fit in, under some stacked wood and above a small short table directly beneath it. Stella and I both went over to see what it was that was so gripping, but neither one of us could find the least thing. I finally settled down on the old “sun tea” chair, right next to him and proceeded to become astoundingly interested in nothing at all, too, but my nothing was the whole environment around me. In the shadow of the studio, it was quite pleasant, and all around me the desert quiet settled upon everything like a shroud. Occasional soft sounds of jets far overhead, faintly tearing at the fabric of the sky, and the odd car passing in the distance going down Godwin, were just about it as far as auditory input went. In the far distance, the slanting light on the Sheep Hole’s increasingly upped the sharp relief of distant ridge and valley, and in the near distance, a quintet of those weird large bugs with long pointy tails that fly around here occasionally, engaged in an endless lopsided circling of a particular creosote bush without ever leaving or landing. I clocked over forty-five minutes in this fashion, and when I returned to the Hell Trailer, Ripley had departed back into his burrow, the bugs were still circling, Bonzo was still in his little space, and Stella had returned to see if she might be able to find out what it was under there that was keeping his attention the way it was.

Sometimes, nothing at all is all you need.

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