#62: Banana Slug -Levy, Skirmish Style

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many weeks earlier
Carlos Skirmish Farm

Carlos Skirmish was pretty smart for a black man. That’s what the neighbors always said when they were asking him to help them. Carlos didn’t particularly care what they said. When he got a notion in his head he ran with it.

Back in the day, Carlos’s GrandPa and Weldon’s Grandpa had both came to the Delta with a pocket full of money and bought farms. No one rightly knew where they got the money but rumor had it that there had been something to do with a big planter who had been abusing his ShareCroppers during the big flood and had tried to escape to Africa of all places. That had been a bad move. No one said anything about it though, people learned the hard way to mind their own business.

Carlos’s Grandpa built a farm as had Weldon’s. It was a good farm and he passed it to his son, and his son passed it to Carlos, as had Weldon's. Carlos was the only one of the Delta Farmers that started early and didn’t need Weldon’s help. He built his levee his own-self in his own-way and it was the best of the lot.

Karlee, his wife asked “If you’re are going to build a levee shouldn’t you get started? Why are you setting fence poles? Looks like a corner post too, you’re making it stout.”

Carlos replied to her “Remember how your momma used to tell me. ‘Carlos! If you’re going to catch my daughter you best work smart. Working smart is better than working hard.”

It’s hard for a black person to blush. Karlee was very black. She wasn’t the least bit brown. Her skin was so black that it was almost blue. Yet she blushed. Her parent’s were from Andaman Island and had been refugees from the 2004 Indian Ocean EarthQuake . Somehow they had managed to get to Houston Texas where Karlee had been born.

“You rascal” she said “Of course I remember. Now tell me what setting corner posts has to do with raising a levee. Move over a bit and let me help you.”

The two of them, working together, man and wife, finished building the corner post. He wouldn’t allow her to do as much as she wanted to. He was perhaps overly cautious and old fashioned in some ways, but they got the job done soon enough.

“It’s a focus.” Carlos said. That’s ALL that Carlos said. He had a bet with himself that she’d figure it out real soon.

“Now let’s go build the other focus.” he told her and watched her face. The light began to dawn.

The two of them used the tractor to dig another post hole. Then they cut a big pole to about ten foot in length, planted it firmly in the ground, tamped the dirt soundly then used two smaller poles, shaped their ends into tendons to go into mortises in the big pole at the appropriate angles. They would be corner braces. Carlos believed in overkill. Anything he built did it’s job. He had just finished tamping dirt when Karlee showed up with a rope, A LOT of rope, a thousand feet or more.

She had taken off earlier. He supposed she went for water. Nope. She’d figured it out.

I hope it’s long enough.” she said “It was the longest coil in the shed.”

“That’s my gal” Carlos said “Work smart instead of hard.”

Rope set she helped Carlos with the machinery. He had assembled three them earlier. She clapped her hands and squealed with joy. She had been right!

“Only you! Carlos. Only you could come up with such a thing. What is it?” she asked. She knew very well what it was but she played the game cheerfully.

“It’s a levy builder.” He said.

In truth it was just a bulldozer blade mounted to the front of his Dad’s Mantis 2010 crawler crane. The crane was also pulling a Smooth Wheel road roller.

“Oh. Cooool” she said “ I recognize that old drag bucket. We used to play on that old thing when we were little! Don’t you remember? It must be a hundred years old. So you adapted it? You fill the bucket and dump oh, about four loads of it wide in front of the crawler, then when you drive forward it spreads the the dirt. When your drive forward more the rollers pack the dirt more.”

That’s right” he said “ A dragline bucket will go as deep as the line will let it and I have a lot of line. The telescopic boom can get that bucket way out there too. I can extend the boom all the way out with that light bucket and not have to worry about tipping over. Of course I’ll still use the outriggers just in case. You know me, Belt AND suspender. I have the smaller homemade roller we used for the bridle path last year attached to the front of the old jeep. You can push-pull it back and forth with the jeep to pack down the dirt the Sheep’s Foot misses really tight.”

“We use the rope, strung in an ellipse, as a steering guide. You can use it to make the crawler steer itself while you work the bucket.” she marveled, “My Hero!”

“That would be ‘strung to FROM an ellipse by steering the crawler. “ He said “Smart girl. Now let’s get started, we’ve got a few hundred thousand tons of dirt to move.”

They did that. Carlos used his contraption, and the rope guide, to make a very strong, very tall levee. Karlee pushed the roller behind and tamped the dirt down hard. It’d take more than a few ripples to erode the walls of THAT levee.

They made a magnificent levee, even better than Weldon's had he know it. With a dragline Carlos would just about never run out of dirt. He could reach way out there and go way deep. Like he told Karlee he had many feet of telescopic mast and many, many feet of cable.

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The Next Episode Is
#63: Banana Slug -Carlos Skirmish Farm…
The Previous Episode was
#61: Banana Slug -The Weldon Melton Farm…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
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Book One: SoulStone
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