Dear reader, your patience is nothing short of saintly! Many would have given me up as a lost cause, but you stood firm through these thin times and steadfast in your devotion, when it must surely have seemed that you'd simply been hung out to dry. What have I to offer you in return? Only the most abject and parsimonious remuneration, I fear.

  If our humble hobby rewarded one based on the effort one puts into it, the shelving aisle at my local hardware store would be barren. But "if" is a small word with a very big reputation--and a dubious one at that. Twenty pits have been opened and closed since the day of my last worthwhile entry, and all we have to show for it are multiple calluses and blisters.

 

******* 

 

  We gazed out across the expanse of sun-buckled, glistening blacktop, and I felt that we may as well have been three doomed denizens of the Inferno standing before some boiling molten lake. It was, instead, a disused parking lot in downtown Maysville which had already grudgingly relinquished a dozen disappointing pits over the past month or so. Yet here we were again, armed with iron spikes, sledgehammers, and spud bars, attempting to woo Lady Fortune with our unflinching, manly (!) resolve.

 

 

 

 

   We eventually probed a couple of pits and began the arduous task of cutting through the foot of asphalt and packed gravel which covered them. This unpleasantness, however, was soon eclipsed by one of far grander magnitude and discomfort which arrived in the shape(s) of Cheech and Chong, the local ne'er-do-wells.

    "Wazzup ma brothers?" chirped Cheech, in a tone that perfectly matched his swaggering gait.  "What you crazy mothers doin' diggin' big-ass holes in the ground when you could be chillin' like we is?"

   It was quite clear that Cheech's midnight border crossing (there wasn't an ear in town that hadn't been bent) some years earlier had made him something of a local celebrity. He wasn't confident, but snared many a lost soul with that brand of titanic arrogance peculiar to minor and major dictators alike. He wasn't a peacock; he was a scavenging, raucous crow. He wasn't the fruitful or eye-catching product of a gardener's focused devotion; he was the creeping, vine-like weed that rapidly strangles and surpasses everything in its way. Many would argue that his sort amount to nothing; but I've puzzled my way through their sterile subdivisions, with nothing more than the numbers on a mailbox to verify my destination; been admitted via intercom into the claustrophobic hush of their ivory towers; mimed and gesticulated through the transparent membranes of their fearful isolation. Natural selection is impartial, it seems.           

  Chong, on the other hand (who was twice the size of his compadre), hung back and remained perfectly mute. He was a disciple of Caucasian descent, whose only claim to fame revolved solely around his attachment to such an illustrious and benevolent guru.

    "Well, dude," replied the ever courteous Brad, "believe it or not, this is our way of chilling on our days off. This isn't work for us, it's our hobby."

   This concept was obviously too much for our good homey to grasp. It made saucers of his eyes and rendered him speechless for fully thirty seconds. Then his countenance was suddenly transformed into that of one experiencing an epiphany. "You wanna smoke some of this with us?" he asked, holding up a cigar-sized spliff and beaming omnisciently, as if he'd discovered the very thing that might restore us to our senses.

    "I don't think that's going to help us with this!" I chuckled affectedly, motioning in the direction of the hole which had, by this time, consumed all but Tim's head and shoulders.

    "That's pussy talk, bro!" exclaimed Cheech, through the pungent fog of his most recent exhalation. "I used to go to work buzzed coz I got more done that way--it was my inspiration!"

    I found his use of the past tense particularly interesting. It either meant that he now went to work sober and got less done, or that he was currently unemployed. I'm not a gambling man, but I'd have bet my house on the latter speculation.

    As you might imagine, our downward progress was somewhat stymied as a result of so many well-intended interruptions. The spiraling descent of my mood, on the other hand, was gaining momentum with each passing second. I was half expecting to burst through my clothing, turn green, and start growling through gnashed teeth; but recalling the hideous hairdo which comes with that particular package was enough to dissuade me.

    Certain blessings materialize in the most unlikely of guises. Two such examples of this phenomenon now made their presence heard from a stoop on the other side of the street. They were curvaceous creatures that possessed certain human characteristics, but too few to make a definitive judgment on the matter. Whatever they were, their power and influence over Cheech and Chong was clear for all to see, because as soon as their distinctive caterwauling reached the ears of our brotherly amigos, they bid us "adios" (or Cheech did, while Chong merely grunted) and set off with winged heels in the direction of these peculiar magnets.

    Tim seemed puzzled as he watched them shuffling away. "Why do you think they wear their pants so low on their asses?" he asked, with feigned naivety.

    "Perhaps it's all part of some elaborate mating ritual," I suggested. "After all, their boxers are bright red and appear to mimic the backsides of baboons."

    "That's the females, you dolt!" jeered Brad.

    "Why thank you, Mr. Attenborough," I sneered, with the suavity of a BBC presenter, "but in case you hadn't noticed, these roles have become quite interchangeable in this day and age.

 

 

 

*******

 

  

    The first privy was a late 1860's / 1870, circular rock-liner with nothing in it but four feet of water and this....

 

  

                                      Where's Ansel Adams when you need him?

   

 

 

   

  The nicest PA crock that I've dug.

 

 

 

 

 

         The second pit was 1860's for the most part. It also turned out to be a one-hit wonder; but what a hit it was!

 

 

A fairly simple equation.

 

 

  J.BROSEE / MAYSVILLE / MINERAL WATER.