Growing up we always had dogs. When they would dig holes in the garden or yard, my father would egg them on by saying, “dig for the Chinaman!” The first time he said it, I raced inside to check his geography on our globe. He was off by quite a bit, but it made for entertaining — if not a bit xenophobic — play for the dogs.

This remembrance kept cropping up as we hauled buckets of mud up and out of a quarry behind Howlets. This small quarry, actually called a “motion” (the term for a one- or two-man quarrying site), had begun to fill up with muck and debris over the years. It felt like we were digging for China.

Shovel in hand

This summer’s drought-like conditions dried up the motion to the point that the bottom was visible. How clean and tidy it would look from the kitchen windows if only we could remove the gook! The entire Rabin/Atwood family was pressed into service over the course of a week’s time. Buckets and wheelbarrows were filled and hauled up and out again and again. Picture the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence from Fantasia, except rather than carrying buckets of water we had buckets of muck. In an attempt to be encouraging, Heather offered that the gardens would love this rich compost being removed from the seemingly bottomless pit. It was a bit of a cold comfort for our aching backs. As the wide granite steps left by the quarrymen began to reappear from under the detritus, the original shape of the motion came into view. The stone removed from this motion was used to build Howlets in 1911. As we contemplated the men carrying the stone from the earth instead of mud, we stopped whining about our labors.

Mucking about

When the snow melts and then the Spring rains come, this small quarry will fill up again and provide tidy eye candy from the kitchen’s french doors. After the back breaking labor, it had better. . . . The price we pay for beauty.

From quarry to home

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