LAST EDITED ON Apr-29-19 AT 03:40PM (MST)[p]This story has a good ending.
Bright and early this a.m., I drove over to the nearby Home Depot, where about a dozen workers-for-hire were lurking in the parking lot. The first two I spoke to were waiting on a pick up from someone they had worked with before. The next one didn't understand a word I said -- perhaps because I mentioned a shovel.
So then I struck up a conversation in ENGLISH with a guy about 22-23 or so named Jesus (as in Hayzuss) not the guy with the cross. He was born here, went to school in Flagstaff and spoke perfect English.
That thrilled me to no end because before I left home I had printed out a bunch of stuff in Spanish off a translation site in case I needed more than my quite sparse supply of Spanish words and phrases. He also had a buddy there named Javier, who was also born here and spoke perfect English with no accent.
So we sat and talked for about 20 mins. and did a little haggling until we got close to the right price. I can tell you right now that they no longer work for minimum wage. Finally, Javier offered to follow me home to see the job. That was about 6:15. They agreed to do it for $200, and I told them to get their butts going, which they did by starting to dig the trench.
In the meantime, I had to wake up my wife so she could go to HD and pick up a couple bags of cement to mix with the gravel I already had in my backyard. She wasn't too pleased since she doesn't sleep well but tries to do so until at least 9 everyday.
By the time she got back, they had finished the digging and moving the dirt to a backyard planter. They already had my mixer and a couple wheelbarrow loads of gravel out front. Once the cement got there, Jesus mixed and Javier wheeled it to the trench for distribution atop the plastic that Jesus had already put down.
They finished the job at 10:45, and I was very satisfied with the result.
The only glitch was sort of humorous. I was sitting on the patio, and they were on the other side of my driveway loading dirt into my wheelbarrow. All of a sudden I nearly came out of chair when what sounded like a gun shot came from where they were. Jesus turns and says "you got a blown tire."
Since he was right next to the right rear tire of my wife's Elantra, which I couldn't see, I thought that was what he meant. Nope, it was the old, dried out tire on my 40-yr-old wheelbarrow that went kaboom after I had aired it up earlier because it was flat.
End result: I sent Javier across to my neighbor's to ask to borrow their wheelbarrow, which we did.
TONY MANDILE
How To Hunt Coues Deer
