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For almost a year now I’ve been collecting bits and pieces to build a patio in the back yard. Most all of them from Craigs List. I’d gotten a how-to book from Lowes and planed, built, redesigned and moved the patio about a hundred times in my head. Now, bearing down fast on Leaving Time, I really wanted to have this loose end sown up, so I sent an email out to some friends asking for help and offering beer and Gabes ribs in thanks.

At first I was disappointed in the response – which was nothing. No one said no, no one said yes, no one said anything. I was feeling a little abandoned, but it was what it was and I’d just have to deal. I guess it just took a while to sink into everyone, because on Saturday Janet, Hillsy, Phil, Geoff, Shannon, Susan, Michelle and Maria all showed up to help.

Smart man that I am, I had done a lot of prep work so that when they arrived I could get the most out of them. A few days before I had hired Mark and his bobcat to break up the soil. Then Willie and Susan helped me to level it. We dug trenches and put rail road ties in, then back filled and raked. Next I needed sand for drainage and I called Brad. He let me borrow his truck to pick it up -and not only did he help me unload – he brought PBRs to fuel the shoveling. On Saturday morning Lee lent me his whacker packer. No, its not a gay sex toy, it’s a heavy vibrating machine about the size of a push mower that’s used to pack dirt. Whacker Packer quickly became the word of the day though. Any time you could work it into conversations -there it was. “Yeah, the shovels over there against the fence behind the whacker packer. You know, the yellow whacker packer. Whacker packer. ” I had to meet Tallyman on Heywood at 9:30 to get it and when I got home folks started arriving.

Shannon, Janet, Hillsy and Geoff were the first to pull in – 3 bikes and a mini van. I split them into two teams – Janet and Hillsy were given the project of making a step into the raised patio, and Geoff and Shannon were asked to make the walkway out of the back gate. Maria was put to work shucking corn and making potato salad. Everyone threw them selfs into the work and did an amazing job!

With almost no direction Shannon and Geoff, with the help of late arrival Phil, made a path that has absolutely no discernible pattern. They made circles, half circles, a Maltese cross and the prettiest sewer clean out you’ve ever seen. Its random and more beautiful than anything I could have ever imagined or done. Hillsy and Janet made a semi-circular step hemmed in with rail road ties that has an Asian look to it. Susan and Amanda dropped in about lunch time and started the big circle on the raised area but had to go before they could finish. Maria and I took over when the ladies had to leave and Michelle, after cleaning up from lunch, supplied everyone with bricks while musing on the finer points of how to groom your mound of Venus and singing German songs about buttons.

On Sunday I sat and chipped odd shaped pieces of brick to complete the project, and I spent a lot of time looking. I looked at all the effort my friends put in. I looked and I saw their signature in the step, in the walkway, in the circles of brick. More than 10 people contributed to making the patio and I will forever see their hands, hearts and creativity embedded in my back yard. Its things like this that make a house a home and a man immeasurably wealthy.

Thank you all so much.

Whacker Packer