POST HOLE HELL

My Mailbox and its supporting post has died.
Actually, someone backed over it and put it out of its misery. A few months ago some vandals came by and performed blunt force trauma on it, rendering itunable to close the door and the flag permanently in the down position.
However and whoever put the final bullet in its brain remains at large.

So, hi-ho, hi-ho, its off to Lowes we go. We, as in Wifey, who also wants toget flowers for the porch and some birdseed for the feeders, and to gaze upon deck furniture that we can ill afford. That's Another story for another day I'm sure.

Back to the Mailbox issue.

We got a mailbox. And a post for it. The box said it was a "no dig" post. I dug that it was a no dig post because I have digged--rather--dug-before, and I don’t care for it. SO I bought the "no dig" post, piled everything in the back of the Yukon and headed home.

Next day.
Go to work. Come home. Tired, aggravated for no real reason except I am dragging because its Monday but figure I should get to work on my "no dig" post and new mailbox. I opened the box without so much as a paper cut. I am on a roll. I empty the contents and go for the directions. I am a big believer in directions. I once tried to assemble a swingset without directions and I still have a nervous tick from it. Never again. Besides, I can sit down while reading directions and not take any grief from you know who (Wifey) about not getting moving on the project--reading the directions shuts her up every time.
Step 1. Either I can take my 4 pound hammer and drive the wood supporting post into the ground (this is the "no-dig" method) or I can dig a hole. (At this moment I should have put everything back in the box and, as they say,"call the man"....I know that digging a hole is the only real way to put a mailbox post in the ground. Besides, I had eaten a very "non-manly" salad for lunch, and I was not to proud about that. I needed to do some MAN stuff and this would get me back on the path of righteousness.

Around this time Mans best Friend (Joe Fisher) shows up to assist his Old Man-

(important note: The art of being a Man is the ability to sub delegate and manage).

I instructed Joe to get the shovel and we both marked the spot for the hole."this looks lush enough" says Joe. "Concur" I say. We bonded. It was abeautiful thing. A decision in less time than it takes to say "Where do youthink it should go?" like a wife would say.

About that time the Neighbors came backing out of the driveway, and Mike advised that he had some post hole diggers in his garage that I was welcomed to use.

"I'd rather eat Liver in hell with gasoline soaked underwear than to use posthole diggers", was my reply.

Post hole diggers are INDEED the work of the devil himself, and if there is a hell, there will be plenty of post holediggers available to all who reside there.
I owned a pair of Post holediggers once, when we had our first house. I was young and stupid then.
When we moved, I instructed Wifey to leave those post hole diggers as a housewarming gift for the new tenants. As God as my witness I wouldn’t go hungry or use post hole diggers again.

Mike drove off with somewhat a peculiar look on his face.

Perhaps he didn’tknow I had served my time in Post hole digger hell, and that my body size and frame (soft, short and with little upper body strength-think pear with toothpicks for arms and legs)was not made with posthole digging in mind.
Had the Hanoi Hilton had post hole diggers, the POWs would have sang like canaries.

The shovel worked for approximately three scoops.
I didn’t cuss.
I didn’t panic.
I didn’t let on like Armageddon was near.
I steeled myself, and took yon shovel from mans best friend and tried to scoop out a shovel full of earth.
Nada.
Nyet.
Bedrock.
No earth in that hole, reason being all the dirt was displaced by Georgia red clay, whose tinsel strength is 158.6 times greater than that of titanium. I did what I had to do. I looked both ways before crossing the street, and then went to Mikes garage and got the Post hole diggers.

Joe looked at me and said "Hey Dad, didn’t we use to have a set of those"?

I gave him the diggers and told him he had done such a good job with the shovel that he would be a cinch with these.(actually, he made little work of the hole-he is 17 and bullet proof)

I went to my shop and retrieved a small wheelbarrow and a sack of ready mix concrete. I May as well do it right, I think to myself. I get the shovel, the water hose, and head over to the newly formed hole and see immediately that Joe needs a break.

"Joe, I will carefully add the water, you mix.."

I had mixed concrete several times before in my life, and here I am teaching my son to do the same thing, and he at the tender age of 17. You always want your kids to have it better than you did.Watching Joe sweat reminded me that I needed to drink some water so I drank a swallow from the hose as Joe began to mix.We got the concrete ready, filling it around the wood stake previously anchored into the ground and as prescribed in step 2. I released Joe from his temporary duty (his girlfriend had patiently been waiting inside the house) and finished up my handy work.
This entire process may have taken 15 minutes.

I was feeling pretty good about everything when IT HAPPENED.

Wifey came bounding out of the house wuth that look on her face. It is the same look she had when I totaled her car a few years ago, the same look onher face when she came to investigate me working on the car, when I did minor plumbing or repair work, and the exact look she gave me when I was putting upthe swingset and even the inflatable pool that time.
It was that look that roughly translates into the following:"you are screwing up and I know it because I am like a shark drawn to blood when you start working on anything and why didn’t you check with me before you started to dig I hope you have your cup on because I'm going to kick yous quare in the you know (what rhymes with whats)"...."why did you dig the hole here?" she asks."Why not?", I reply."you're too close to the street", says she."No I isn’t", say I.(It is entirely possible that I may have mentioned to her at this moment thatshe really should take her butt back inside because I knew what I was doing and if she didn’t like it she could not only dig the hole herself, but she may as well go to hell and get one of the many sets of post hole diggers theyhad available)Undaunted, she says "the box will poke out in the middle of the street"...

I rally and fire a volley of "NO IT WON'Ts"--"I don’t want the mailman to drive a rut in the yard, followed by a "it will be dead even with the street which is optimum" and one last "It will work fine" before I was shut down. She stormed off back inside the house muttering unintelligibles. They were unintelligible because I couldn’t hear her. Maybe it was because I was tired already, maybe it was because I know what the end result would be. I didn’t even throw a George Fisher patented thermo-nuclear fit (I wanted to). I pulled out the wood stake, scooped outall of the already mixed concrete, and filled the hole back with the titanium laced red clay that had been dug previously. I went back inside told her inas firm and authoritarian voice I could muster, "Where do you want the hole?"(my mind was answering this question by saying "upside your head" but Iremained calm).

She came back outside, and showed me where she wanted the hole to be dug.Then she show me another place. And another. Still another. I did what any other person in the occupation of manual labor would do. I leaned against my post hole diggers and waited for a decision."Where do you think it should go?", said she."You already know", I replied, nodding my head in the direction of the freshly filled titanium, red clay, and leftover concrete laced hole where my current visit to hell had begun, and thinking had I kept digging a little wider and deeper, I could be placing her in that hole along with the mailbox. Although the thought was fleeting it felt good to think it.

In a nanosecond her shrillness blasted me back into reality.

"Fine", she says, and by this time youngest daughter and Pro Mom supporter Winnie had come out, having immediately joined forces with her birth mother and telling me herself, "George, George, George, you should have listened to Momma." Winnie got the mailbox and laid on the ground in order they get amore clearer picture of where the hole should be. Novices, I say to myself.Had they a calibrated and trained MAN eye like myself, they could do withoutall the theatrics and merely mark the spot to dig, as Joe and I had done.Between the both of them they picked the spot. I asked if they were sure.They said yes. "Would you like to use a lifeline or call a friend?", I advise.
Susan (by this time she is not "Wifey" any longer, but possibly Ex-Wifey)clears her throat, "ahem".....

My hole digging began in earnest. The first one was practice.By this time Mans best friend is back with girlfriend and watching TV in my mancave, a place where I should be hiding. My neighbor Mike and his wife are now back home, and the neighbor lady and her daughter across the way have decided to take their dog for a walk. Amanda and Pootie come riding up from their weekend in North Carolina, and in a matter of 25 seconds the entire neighborhood, or what appears to be most of it, have begun migrating towards the man with post hole diggers in his hand.

Mrs. Fisher is now holding court and briefing everyone on the current scenario. I had no idea that me digging a #@$%^ hole in the ground would garner so much attention. There are now women, dogs, and babies in my driveway, all of them looking at me like an an exhibit at the zoo.

Cars that normally fly by our house are now slowing down, looking at me dig, pointing, waving. I know none of these people. I strike harder with the diggers. The red clay on this side of the driveway is ten times harder than on theother side. My digging method becomes a dance of sort, with a strike of the diggers into the clay, followed by a quarter turns, repeating, and a final scoopful of clay out of the hole. Strike, Four quarter turns, scoop. So easy,like the foxtrot. I call it the Posthole Polka, but only because I don’t feel too much like cussing right now.

Finally, a new hole dug.

All the while, the neighbor ladies and dogs and babies sounding like a hen house, clucking away blah, blah, blah, cackle, cackle, cackle. With so much clucking I'm surprised to not see any eggs. Had I a backhoe I could dig a really, really big hole and bury them all in it.I finish my work, and leave the concrete to set up and dry. The mounting of the post and final assembly of the mailbox will come tomorrow.

Post hole diggers.

Along with Astroturf, Aluminum Bats, and Liver . They are unwanted, undesirable, and uncomfortable. Whoever invented them must have been prepared to spend some time in hell. GLF