Homesteader Blues
Volume 2 of Life and Love in Alaska
By Cherime MacFarlane
Copyright 2014 Cherime MacFarlane
Copyright Notice:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is completely coincidental.
Author's Note: I've sung that blues tune more than I care to think about.
License Notes:
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Artwork: Cherime MacFarlane
Dedicated to; two old "dirt farmers" who knew they were lucky S.O.B.'s, Terry and Sam.
There’s a saying out here and every farmer out this way knows what you mean if you mention you have the homesteader blues. It means you have to fix something to fix something to fix something.
I somehow talked the old lady, for God’s sake don’t let her know I called her that, into taking the kids to town. The family was planning to spend the entire week of the Alaska State Fair with friends in Palmer and take in everything the Fair offered.
My plot was to make a much-needed renovation to the old place I knew she would love. Tina had been putting up with hauling water for well over twelve years. How I talked her into marrying me and coming out here to live is still a mystery. I was and still am one very lucky S.O.B.
In my head, I always refer to her as “the old lady,” it’s a kind of gallows humor I suppose. I don’t want to jinx what we’ve got by getting too vocal about it all. Let me get back on track here.
After hustling my butt big time around this joint, I more or less had stuff ready for the big job. My plan was to put in gravity feed running water. Hot running water and a real honest-to-God flush toilet in the bathroom was the goal.
A bathtub was not workable. I would've loved to give her one, but the damn things take too much water.
It would be wonderful to have a gigantic bathtub we could have fun in. But the thought of hauling five hundred gallons of water to the house every other day is mind-boggling. No can do.
Too many other things need to be done around here for me to waste that much time. You don’t understand how long it takes to sit at the community well waiting to fill the tank. I get a lot of quality time in reading while sitting there.
There are other things I can get done while pumping the water up into the house. But someone needs to keep an eye out on the operation, so when the tank is empty, the pump gets shut off.
Otherwise, I would wind up buying a new pump several times a year. As expensive as they are, keeping an eye on the tank is a real priority.
Okay! Tina and the kids were on the road. After I had activated the GPS on her phone without her knowledge, it was easy to see where Tina was. I wasn't trying to be a prick; it was necessary because I needed to know when any chance of her turning around and coming back to the house because somebody forgot something no longer existed. It would take every last minute of the time available to pull this off.
As soon as she turned onto the Glenn Highway, I figured we were good to go. I got on the horn to old man Higgins down the road, and the septic tank was on its way. Jenks, the guy with the D9 Cat, said he would be along shortly.
Knowing him the word ‘shortly’ could mean anywhere from an hour to half a day. I made sure he was on the way by telling him Tina made a lemon meringue pie the previous night, and I had a fresh pot of coffee brewing.
When you want to get work out of a bachelor, mention pie. I also told him Higgins would be down in about fifteen minutes, and there was only half the pie left. I heard him starting the D9 as he hung up the cell phone. Done.
When Higgins got there, the “Homesteader Blues” started playing. I hoped to get the big tank off Higgins’ trailer by winching it off with his big come along and mine, I got shot down. The sheepish look on Higgins’ face told me there was a real problem with the preferred method.
His come-along used wire cable inside. It seems he had tried pulling out a real big stump and screwed the thing up big time. We had a chain to use for attaching to the two big trees I was hoping to deadman from. No dice, until I fixed his come along.
I went to work on the cable. I had to cut it and unwind the whole flipping thing then wind it back up by hand. The flap over the hook was bent, and I had to remove it and straighten it out so I could attach the hook to the chain.
While I was working on that, along comes Jenks. I’m working my butt off in the shop in the barn, and those two low-life are scarfing up the pie and coffee in the kitchen.
Neither Jenks nor Higgins took the time to tell me Jenks made it over. If they had, I would have got Jenks to pull the damn tank off the trailer with the D9. I know why Higgins said nothing, he wanted the come along fixed. Jenks kept his trap shut because he wanted that pie. Turkeys!
Once Jenks got the tank off the trailer, he started in on digging out the hole for the septic tank. I must admit to being a little short with Higgins. He knew this whole project was timed down to the last hour.
Any other time, I would have been happy to help him fix it. The fact is had he called me the day before; I would have taken care of the repair.
We’re going along at a good clip when I hear a loud popping sound and look up from using the Ditch-witch I rented. Damned if the hydraulic fluid wasn't giving old Jenks a good bath as it sprayed out from the engine of the D9.
The D9 popped a frickin line, and I had to go back to the shop. I jury-rigged the piece of shit line together just to get the job finished.
A length of copper tubing, six hose clamps, three on each side of the busted line I jammed over the copper line, were the components. A ton of safety wire threaded through the clamps would hold the hose on the tubing, or so I hoped. After putting the line back on, we were off and running again.
The pressure inside one of those lines is enormous. I was praying the repair would make it through the day. If we lost any more fluid, it was off to the auto parts store 45 miles away. That would lose us at least half the damn day.
Jenks finished pushing the dirt over the tank by the light of his truck's headlights and mine. But I still had work to do in the trench to get the line from the house to the septic tank. The rental unit had the ditch down three feet. Problem is to keep the line from freezing, it had to be buried deeper. To get six feet down, the other three feet had to be dug by hand. At least I was halfway there.
At about 11:00 p.m. I fell into bed, so damn tired two slices of cheese with two pieces of lunch meat wrapped around them was dinner. I managed to get my socks, jeans and flannel shirt off. The rest could take care of its self.