Interest in the Ditch

Last week I was driving to the Toybox when I saw a child's swimming pool laying in the ditch.  It was wrecked, folded in half, basically destroyed.  Even with all of that, I found myself thinking about what I could do with this.  Now, why would my mind go there?  It struck me that I have been trained this way all of my life.

One of the earliest memories that I have of my father is driving through the country looking for corn.  Yes, in Iowa.  This was a time when corn was picked and stored still on the cob rather than shelled the way that it is now and corn was moved in much smaller wagons than today as well.  Because of this, and because most farmers wanted to maximize the amount that they hauled, many times you would find ears of corn that had spilled off the top of wagons.  We would drive around the back roads during harvest time looking for these "finds."  When we came upon some, dad would stop the car and I would jump out and recover the ears of corn.  We would then take them home, shell them by hand and put the corn in a barrel that we kept in the shop.  We used this to feed the birds through the winter.  This worked great since whole corn is really well liked by Cardinals and these were the birds that dad liked to see the most.  Fast forward thirty plus years and these are some of Sara's favorite birds as well.  Anyway, this was my first experience with looking for things that had been lost along the road.  I still remember the excitement of jumping out to get those ears of corn, feeling the exhilaration of getting something in that manner.

What dad and I did though was nothing compared to years later with my grandfather.  Grandpa Art was the rock foreman for Keokuk County here in Iowa and he drove all of the back roads of the county all of the time.  Doing this, and keeping his eyes open, allowed him to see many things that had either been lost, or cast off into the grader ditches around the county.  Over the years that I rode with him in the truck, there were several times I remember jumping out to reclaim something that had found its way to the side of the road, but there was one time that was beyond belief.  One Saturday morning, Grandpa told me to grab a handsaw and jump in the pickup with him.  I thought nothing of it.  We drove out of town and after some time, we stopped on the side of the road.  In the ditch was an old horse-drawn dirt slip.  This was a piece of equipment used to move dirt on construction projects before there were bulldozers. 

Although all of this is interesting, the most amazing part was that there was a tree growing up through the handle of the slip.  This was no obstacle for my grandfather.  After all, that's why we brought the saw. So, down into the ditch I went, saw in hand to cut the tree out. This was accomplished in short order and we pulled the slip out of the ditch, loaded it into the pickup, and took it home. This was reclaiming or picking, depending on what word you want to use, long before it became popular.  Of course there was a plan with what we were going for it.  We planned to repaint it, put it in the front yard, fill it with dirt and Grandma would plant flowers in it.

I am not sure what year this was, but my feeling was that I was in my early teens.  Let's call that 1970, just for argument's sake.  Thirty years later, when we cleaned up the place after my grandmother passed away; there behind the garage, right where Grandpa and I had put it, was the highway dirt slip.  It was amazing to me then, and it continues to be to me today, how quickly three decades can pass.  I think the other thing that it really helped to teach me, was that at any point in time you need to have some "starter" projects.  You should always have several things around that you intend to get to, so that on any given day, depending on the way you feel, there is a project to work on.  If you don't have some extra projects and you don't want to work on the one you have, you will never get anything done.

Well, all in all, at the time it was a great plan, even though it never happened.  It is interesting, though, as I look around my Toybox I see several items that came from the ditches.  The first you would see if you visit is the heavy yellow drop cords I use.  These started as a 100' cord in the back of someone's pickup, but when Andrew and I found it in the middle of the highway it was in several pieces.  We cut the pieces to length, put new ends on and they now serve me throughout the shop.  Needless to say, I continue to drive and watch my surroundings, because you never know what you will find. 

As I think back, I guess I can thank both my father and my grandfather for teaching me this skill.  For this, I am thankful.  You should try it too.