BEFORE AND AFTER
JK was here last weekend with a bottle of wine and a flask of Wild Turkey and we all had stories to share. I drank lemonade and everything went smoothly. Always does.
Then Sweetheart came down with a wicked migraine. This is a first. It lasted three days with horrendous vertigo, much motion-sickness and a royal nightmare. We have to re-think what to prepare for next time. This caught us bottomless.
Now she is recovered and getting stronger. A turquoise skirt and white blouse, barefoot in the gardens, joyous to be alive.
Just in time for a drunk who slammed into my stone wall the other night at 3:30. Sweetheart heard it all. I slept through it all. But I was out there from 7-9 this morning rebuilding 50 feet of stone wall. This isn't a suburban frilly stone structure, but a genuine farm wall; some stones the size and weight of woodstoves.
The idiot (all drunk drivers are idiots) left behind his front grille to the vehicle (Land Rover) and one intact headlight. Inside the headlight frame was the date 1999.
We could see in the dirt road where his tracks left the road and even went possibly airborne, smacking against the side of two sugar maple trees, then raking or plowing along the stone wall. For awhile there it seems the driver was driving on top of the wall, grinding to get off. On a basswood tree we found gouge marks 10 feet up on the bark. That from the vehicle's climb.
When the vehicle got wrenched back onto the road it came within inches of going over the cliff edge to the river. Inches.
It still wasn't done — the vehicle came bounding onto the lawn of our yard and lunging toward another stone wall, just missing that. Leaving a tire track in the grass, it was gone...spreading oil for a half mile on the dirt road heading north. Up river.
I saw the fragile tips of light purple hosta flowers blowing in its wake.
Sweetheart said the stone wall looked better after I was done rebuilding it than before. I built "before", too. A long time ago.
photos © bob arnold
