The summer of my discontent

It was only 7:00 am, but the cicadas were already in full cry and the temperatures in the 90s. My brother Doug and I looked east across the three acres of our property; glittering sparkles of blue, green, and red made it look like sunrise on the ocean. Pop, in white shirt and tie, spoke.

“OK, so there it is,” he said, beckoning expansively. He held up two office-sized trash cans. “You’ll get fifty cents for each bucket you pick up. It’s the honor system.” Doug and I looked narrowly at each other.

“I’ll see you guys tonight,” he said as he got into his car. I noticed a big sweat stain down the back of his white shirt; we’d been outside five minutes.

Doug and I sighed. Great way to start summer vacation.

If nothing else, Pop was stubborn. Determined, he preferred. Damn stubborn Norwegian was Mom’s term.

We had a house built west of Boca Raton, FL, along with six other families. It was in the middle of the boondocks…but from a kid’s perspective, a great place to grow up. The builder had cagily hand-picked people with kids who were about the same age as his, so there was no shortage of friends with whom to build forts, ride minibikes or play Marco Polo.

The other families had gotten along fine with the builder. Pop was another story. The house was finished, landscaped, ready for occupancy. The only remaining item was to add some fill to a low spot and spread it around.

The builder said, fine, no problem, just give me the final installment and I’ll get it done. Oh no, said Pop. You do it and I’ll give you the final installment. Round and round they went, no one wanting to back down. Days turned into weeks.

The development, in farm country, was built near a former migrant worker facility. On Saturday nights, the liquor flowed and by the time the builder bought the 40-acre parcel, there were empty bottles everywhere. He carefully pushed them into a towering pile with his bulldozer. The pile…blue, purple, green, amber, red…sat in the middle of our lot. They just needed to be picked up with a backhoe, loaded into a dump truck, and carried away.

Pop and the builder reached an impasse and communications became strained, then ceased all together. A cold war ensued. Finally, the impasse was broken; one day we found the builder had taken his bulldozer, run over the pile like a tank, and spread the shards of broken glass everywhere across our lot.

Needless to say, the final payment was never made; and on top of the glass issue, every big storm produced a shallow pond about half an acre in size because the fill was never added. The pond, which lasted about 10 days, produced an astonishing number of mosquitos and trilling frogs. Stubborn Norwegian jackass became another moniker from Mom.

We moved in around March and several times Pop made an effort to pick up some of the glass. But after an hour or two, red-faced, sweating and irritated, it was time for a bourbon and coke and his K-Mart floating chair. He drifted around the pool, pondering his problem. The answer came as either Doug and I pushed the lawn mower past him one afternoon.

Thus, on the first day of our vacation in early June, Doug and I were given our assignment of picking up the glass. Shoulders slumped in dejection, we began.

At first, we worked side by side like a couple of mules, grumbling and cursing. But soon we drifted apart, each of us alone in our misery. Now and then, one of us would take a full bucket back to the house, dump it in the trash and make a ticky mark next to our name in Pop’s composition book.

Bent over in the broiling Florida sun, carefully picking up razor-sharp shards of glass, was mind numbing and physically demanding. I developed an uncomfortable pressure in my head, and my trips to the hose for drinks became more and more frequent. The outside hose, which was not run through the water softener, normally tasted like iron; but as I drank and ran the stream over my head, it was incredibly sweet.

By noon, we’d both had it and quit. I’d picked up maybe 10 buckets and Doug a few more; big deal, I thought, as I jumped in the pool. Five bucks for killing myself.

Pop came home from work and checked the composition book. “Is this all you guys did?” he asked. “What happened?” We explained, but he dismissed our explanation with a wave. “Tomorrow try to pick up more.” He went into the air conditioned house; we could see him loosening his tie and kissing mom.

Days turned into weeks as the two indentured servants labored under the July sun like the women in Millet’s painting The Gleaners. Our fingertips became calloused after being jabbed uncounted times.

Our working style evolved as well. Misery loves company and we worked side by side; and as we picked and sweat and sucked on our bleeding fingertips, we grew closer. The grumbling and cursing turned more toward casual conversation, then deeper, meatier discussions. I learned quite a bit that summer about my older brother, and he about me. The two mules became better friends; and time became an abstraction.

Slowly, inexorably, the sparkly ocean sunrise grew less sparkly each morning as hundreds…probably over a thousand…busted bottles went into the trash. Finally we needed to squint to find pockets of sparkly areas where we had missed.

Finally, around mid-July, we were ready. Pop, who had served in WWII, applied his military training to many aspects of our lives; one of the least popular was the mandatory inspection after an assignment. We trailed behind him as he slowly walked the property, occasionally pointing to a shard here or there that we had missed. Finally, he was satisfied.

“Great job, guys,” he said lightly, as though we had merely swept off the front porch or did a bit of weeding. “Let’s go up to the house and we’ll settle up what I owe you.” Doug and I…our faces cracked, red and peeling, no sunscreen in those days…looked at each other with relief. The back yard project was in the books.

However, the ephemeral rainwater pond…which was dubbed Lake Sidney in sarcastic honor of the builder…was never fixed. For the next thirty years, mosquitos, croaking frogs and Stubborn Norwegian jackass plagued him every other month…all over 100 bucks worth of dirt.

I’d like to think he learned something. But we all knew better.

Love ya, Pop 🙂