Ashley & Milo

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  It was ten a.m. when the crane backed into the driveway. It backed across this end of the lot and close to where the gazebo was to be placed. Immediately a crowd gathered on the street. This was an occasion in this stately neighborhood. I had been promised that the transport would be right behind the crane. As soon as it arrived, it backed right up next to the crane. The sling was already in place on the building. It was zip, zip and the gazebo was up in the air and swinging over one of the trees and into place. It was gently lowered onto the foundation that had supported the original structure.

  The crowd of spectators clapped. One man approached me as the flatbed pulled out with the crane right behind it. "Are you the boss of this job?"

  "Yes I am." I waited to see what this person had on his mind.

  "What concern do you work for?"

  "I don't work for a concern. I rented the apartment above the garage here. Mrs. Winslip hired me to clean up her brushed-over lot. She gave me free reign to do what is needed."

  "Well you are doing a wonderful job. What else are you doing? This lot has been an eyesore for years, but no one has wanted to approach Miss Nelson about how it looked. Too bad she can't do something about how plain this building looks from the street. We have all of these beautiful estates and then you come to this right in the middle of the block. Well this is an improvement anyway. Tell her I said so."

  "You might tell me your name."

  "Oh sorry, I'm Ralph Peterson. Did I see you doing work for the Browns?"

  "Yes, just a little shrub work."

  "More'n a little. Tommy doesn't get things done much. Mrs. Brown has to keep after him. I'm glad he found someone to keep the place up." I thought to myself that this was a typical busybody neighbor. I wondered what his home looked like.

  There were still several people around and some kids standing off to one side out of the way. Lindsey and Marie went over to them and asked, "Would you like to play in the gazebo? My dad wouldn't mind."

  "Okay." My two, four other girls and three boys went scooting across and into the enclosure. This was the biggest gazebo I could find. It was twenty feet across. Inside there were built-in seats on all eight sides. I could hear the kids chattering away getting to know each other. I had a dilemma. I needed to get to the garden center to pick up the new shrubs I was planting in place of the trees I had cut down and taken out. Just then a young couple about my age and the woman, very pregnant, came along asking if I had seen a boy and girl of six and eight.

  I pointed to the gazebo. "I think they may be over there. Say, if you have an hour or so, could you stick around, I need to leave to pick up some stuff. I hate to break up the kids. They sound like they are having a great time. Could you hang around and watch them?"

  "Sure, we would like to see it ourselves. We will wait here until you get back."

  They were slow at the garden center loading my plantings, and I was beginning to worry. I needn't have. When I got back, the kids were still closeted in the gazebo. The husband was waiting patiently for his wife and kids. When he saw me, he asked if I needed a hand unloading the trees.

  I did and I drove over to where they were going to be planted and he helped me unload. All I had left to do now was to prepare the bed and pull the sacking off the root system and put them in the ground. Lindsey and Marie didn't even know I had been gone. The couple, Kim and Will, collected their two and I asked the rest of the kids to leave, but said they could come back whenever my kids were here. Ashley heard me tell them this as she came across the lot. Kim and Will were gone before I could introduce them to Ashley.

  "You're home early," I said to Ashley.

  "Yes. Nothing for me to do and as I am on vacation the next two weeks and needed to be here this afternoon, here I am."

  "You didn't tell me you were on vacation."

  "You didn't ask. Besides you are very free in inviting people to use my property. I think I'd better be here to protect it."

  "You don't mind?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Good, because I invited a couple of older ladies for the opening of the treasure this afternoon."

  "How come?"

  "I didn't intend to, but the girls were talking about me giving away some treasure, so I had to explain to Mrs. Brown. As long as she was invited, I thought it would be a good idea to have Mrs. Hamlin come too." I was waiting for the explosion. There was none.

  "I'm glad Mrs. Hamlin is coming and as long as they are friends, I'll welcome Mrs. Brown. I suspect that there will be a newspaper man here too. The museum asked if it would be okay. They do everything they can to promote the arts. There may or may not be a story, but the museum has it covered."

  She turned to the girls. "Lindsey and Marie, I think our lunch has cooled off, so we will have to nuke it. You may ask your father to join us. That will show him he isn't boss all the time." She smiled as she said this so I knew she wasn't really upset. We strolled along to her house and I washed up as Ashley set out paper plates and pulled the local KFC's cuisine out of the microwave.