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Douglass Clapp
English 1010-025
7/6/2010
Digging Ditches
The sun was beating down on the desert highlands of southeast Idaho on the third week
of June. Rain had been a now distant memory of the cool spring which had left the blooming
grasses and wildflowers wilting and drying where they stood. School had been out for about
three weeks and I was enjoying the fact that I could sleep in and not have any responsibilities for
another two months. Grandpa called that night and asked my mother if he could possibly borrow
Aaron and me for a day. He had a big project that he needed our help with at his house. Since she
had nothing else planned for us on that day she fully agreed and made plans for us to be there the
following evening after she had gotten off work. All that my brother and I were told is that we
were going to be helping out our grandpa the next day. Little did we know what that was going
to entail.
Mom left immediately after we had had dinner since she was tired from work. She gave
us a few simple instructions.
“Listen to your grandpa and try not to fight with your brother, okay?”
“Yes mom,” I replied.
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“Will you please be patient with your little brother and listen to your grandfather?” she
said to Aaron.
“Yessss mom,” he replied as he smirked at me behind her.
Aaron and I sat and played a game of Yahtzee with grandma while grandpa sat at the bar
in the kitchen and listened in on the conversation, adding his own comments from time to time.
The morning came awfully early for the middle of summer vacation. At least early for Aaron
and me that was. Actually six o`clock is early even during the school year. Grandma had already
been up for over an hour and had started making fresh homemade bread and breakfast. This
made the house smell like the best café, bakery, and greasy spoon you have ever been in. Upon
getting our fill; we headed outside and began to work.
We walked over to the ditch and began to get an idea of what was ahead of us. Grandpa
had a plan to dig out the 70 foot long and 3 foot deep ditch, and line it with pieces of aluminum
roofing on the sides to keep it from caving in. This didn’t sound like it was going to be too bad of
a project until we got underway. We began by digging out the ditch to make all the sides of the
ditch straight and perpendicular. The ditch was very mature it was not a super intense project.
This was however a time consuming project due to the amounts of earth we needed to move.
“You are doing that wrong, Aaron snipped, you need to make sure that it is level and
keep up,” Aaron said to me.
“I am working on it,” I replied in protest.
We completed this project in about two hours. We then went to the shop for a short break
and to tell grandpa we were ready for the next phase of the project.
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“Good, good, now go out behind the red shed and grab twelve of those metal fence posts
from the pile, and after you take those over to the ditch, I need you to come and get me and I will
help you grab some roofing and the rest of the supplies.”
“Ok grandpa,” we both replied, and set off on our assigned tasks.
After we had gotten all the supplies together, I didn’t have any idea what we were going
to do with all of the supplies. Grandpa came over to the ditch and crawled down into it and began
to explain what the plan was with the fence posts and roofing. But with my rigid and young mind
I still couldn’t grasp what the whole project was going to look like.
“Place the roofing on its side long ways against the side and put the fencepost down into
the bottom of the ditch about a foot from the end of the roofing. And then I will show you what
to do after that.”
Staying in the ditch he stepped back and let us return to work. Doing as we were told we
placed the tin along the side of the ditch. I held it in place while Aaron pushed the fencepost into
the bottom of the ditch until it wouldn’t go any further under his weight. Grandpa stepped in at
this point and showed us how far he wanted the fence posts driven in. Completing the other side
following the same procedures grandpa stepped in and started to measure and do some
calculations in his head. He crawled back out of the ditch and said that he would be back in a
minute, and that we should take a quick break. He returned with a piece of scrap 2 x 4, a power
drill, a handful of screws and a couple of pieces of metal strapping. He stepped back down into
the ditch and began to putting things together. I looked on with curiosity and intrigue to what this
was going to look like and accomplish. Stepping back and looking at his work with a sense of
accomplishment he decided that this would be sufficient to his needs.
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“Grandpa, what is the point of putting the board between the fence posts? They are in the
ground in all the way. They shouldn’t move right?’
“Well Douglass when you boys place the sand behind the roofing it will push up against
it. So after a while these posts will start to push in because of the bottom of the soft ditch.”
“We are putting sand behind them? You mean that we are not finished once we put these
pieces of roofing in?” I asked.
“Oh no, no, no Ferdinand; You guys are going to have to keep working really hard for a
while so that we are done by the time your mom gets off work. And you don’t want to have to do
this again; do you?”
“Of course not grandpa,” I replied.
We got back to work and finished lining the ditch with the roofing, finishing that project
within an hour while grandpa pulled the trailer into the pasture next to his yard. I looked at the
twenty foot trailer and the heaping pile of sand atop it and felt a little weak in the knees. It was
nearly three feet tall and fifteen feet long and glistened like a small mountain that we were going
to have to move. We began shoveling the mountain into the space behind the roofing and filling
it until the sand was packed all the way to the top.
“Are we ever going to be done,” I asked Aaron quietly.
“Just shut up and keep working. I would rather not be doing this anyways.”
By this point we were about halfway through the mountain of sand and a little over half
way down the ditch. It seemed to keep growing every time that I look towards the end. We kept
shoveling fighting the strong urges to take long breaks or completely stop. This process
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continued until we reached the end of the ditch and looked back at the project we had just
completed and breathed a sigh of accomplishment.
At this point grandpa came on over and gave us both a pat on the back and told us that we
did a good job. Smiling I turned and looked at grandpa, as a polite way to say thanks for the
compliment. I looked at the overall project and realized now what the project was meant to
accomplish. The roofing held up the ditch bank to keep it from caving in and causing the ditch to
keep getting wider and shallower as the banks deposited there dirt into the moving water. I never
would have thought to use the pieces of 2 x 4’s to keep the roofing in place, or all of the other
stuff which had previously been scrap. Working with grandpa was always a new experience of
how to build something new without having to buy it. As I walked through grandma and
grandpa’s yard the other day I looked over at the ditch that we had solidified nearly ten years
earlier. It was now beginning to overgrow with vegetation and looked to have become stronger
than concrete. Looking back at all of the struggles and hard work that it required to complete this
project on that summer day, were worth it in the end. I realized that the work was worth it to
keep us from having to dig the ditch out every two years until we quit irrigating with them.
Which hasn’t stopped to this day.
In spite the fact that we were paid a small salary for our
work; the best payment we could have received was the dinner of homemade fried chicken that
was prepared and ready for us when we walked into the house.