The Smith family purchased property in the early sixties and built themselves a home. Mr. Smith did most of the work alongside his father and father-in-law. Mrs. Smith and her preschool son visited daily to watch the men work.  They moved in the day after their home was approved by the building inspector, and they […]

A nearby city is replacing its sewer mains. They’re excavating entire roadways by employing all the backhoes, bulldozers, bucket loaders, dump trucks and cranes you can squeeze into a residential neighborhood. Between the deep chasms and lumbering vehicles, it’s quite the event. Yet, despite all the screeching, scraping, thumping, and rumbling about, what caught my […]

When I was nine, my father built a giant sieve to separate stones from the soil. He wanted a lawn back where the yard was still piles of rubble from a construction project. At dinner that night he asked me to help him shovel one of the piles through the sieve. At nine, my idea […]