Gettin' Down and Dirty

On Wednesday, I saw the most beautiful sight I had seen in a long time:

I was so excited to see a real, life sized dump truck on the lot!

Unfortunately, the driver misunderstood and thought he was the object of my enthusiasm.

Word got around and the other driver thought he'd better check his look in the side mirror.

Lookin' good, Billy Ray! (Feelin' good, Louis....)

I thought I'd better turn my focus elsewhere.  I didn't want to start anything.  We have enough dirt on this job as it is.

My excitement was so understandable, though.  After a week or so of trying to sell the dirt, we thought we had a home for it.  Only the people who said they wanted it kept leading us on and playing games.  First it was too wet, then they failed an inspection, and finally didn't have the necessary equipment delivered.  Good ol' Gary the Builder Dirt Broker got back in his trusty pickup and made the rounds again.  A house site that hadn't been quite ready when he went by before was now ready to back fill a retaining wall.

These good gentleman showed up and started hauling.

They hauled.

And they hauled.

The pace was a little slow on our end, but they had to use the "whacker packer" on the dirt as it came in at the other end.  So, Ol' Mike Mulligan here was kinda chillin' as he dug.

He does kinda look like Mike Mulligan, don't you think?

The whole scene was sort of reminiscent of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, except that this Mike stayed on top of the hill and didn't dig himself into the basement.

Time for a pop quiz! 

What was the name of Mike Mulligan's steam shovel?

Hmmm?

No cheating.  I'll tell you at the end of this post.

At any rate, by the end of the second day and the 54th dump truck load of dirt, these nice folks  trucks belched (politely) and declared that they had a gracious sufficiency.

(They're southern folk -- that's what you say!)

Problem was, we still had all this dirt yet to dig:

So, who do you think came riding to the rescue in his white truck named Silver?

That's right!  Gary the Builder Dirt Broker found another site - a commercial site - that needed good compactable red dirt to top off their grading job. Doesn't this look like the finest compactable red dirt that money can buy?  And if it's free -- just bring your own truck -- doesn't it become even more desirable?  Yes!

So, by Friday, we had 5 trucks coming and going hauling somewhere around 80 or 90 truck loads away.  That kept ol' Mike Mulligan and his trusty **Mary Ann** busy all day.

We probably still have more loads to haul off, but tomorrow, we will shape up the backyard and do some calculations to see how much dirt we need and how much we still have left.

Now time to check your answers.  How many of you had Mary Ann as your answer?  You can post it in the comments below.  If you had a boy's name as the answer, you have some remedial reading to do!