Pages

October 03, 2007

Pull up a log, but mind your butt....

As I was sitting in the kitchen, chatting and drinking tea with Mac, I got a call from my neighbour across the road.

"The wood guy has taken out your garden."

"What?" I asked, confused. I'd been hearing the sounds of a struggling vehicle from beside my house, but had relegated the sounds to the back of my mind - my other neighbour's vehicles often make struggling sounds.

I looked out the window to see a old Ford pickup and 20+ft. trailer, each loaded to their extended brims with split wood, attempting to drive into my neighbour's backyard. Spinning his tires and chewing up my neighbour's packed-dirt driveway, the wood delivery guy was making no progress against the gentle grade and was attempting to rock the truck up and down the driveway, the truck seriously underpowered for its load.

There was mud sprayed onto the road and now, the truck was mere inches from my neighbour's oil tank and an inch from her relative's truck, which was parked on the side of the driveway. In a slightly jack-knifed position, there was no way that the wood truck could move without hitting one or the other.

Then, for some reason, he decided to disconnect his driveshaft.

It was at this point that I went out to investigate the damage to my rock-walled garden. Yup, taking out a full side of the garden, he did a number on it - not easy to fix.

He asked me if I knew how to attach a universal joint. I said "no" but looked at it anyway. It took me one glance to be sure that the part that he had was incompatible with the driveshaft that he was holding. I watched in wonder as he tried to jam the large round pegs into the small round holes.

I mentioned the garden. Since he had done the damage with his very long trailer, he hadn't noticed. He went to take a look.

"That should'nt be too hard to fix," he said, and resumed his efforts to make the too-large U-joint fit into his driveshaft.

This left me wondering; not too hard to fix by whom?

He abandoned his truck not long after that. As of this morning, it's still sitting in my neighbour's driveway.

I'm waiting to see what happens with my garden. I'm not going to bother fixing it now because he still needs to get his vehicle out of the driveway and I'm afraid of the additional damage that will result when he backs it out. I'll be darned if I'm letting him off without so much as an apology.

I'll keep you posted.

1 comment:

dogsled_stacie said...

Sounds like the guy who brought me wood last winter - took him an HOUR to back out of my STRAIGHT driveway!!! After helping him in the dark, at 11pm for the whole time, he looked at me from the truck and said "gee, you're gonna think I don't know how to drive this thing." No kidding!!!

The wood was great though! Good luck! :)