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Friday, April 29, 2005

I'm really pining for one of those gorgeous sunny and warm days. Now, the weather hasn't been bad for the last week (if you ignore the rain, sleet, and snow) but it hasn't exactly been encouraging for a bike ride either.

Last Sunday was beautiful and warm and I spent that afternoon digging out two stumps that were growing along the foundation of my house, filled in extra topsoil, and put down mulch. My Liberian neighbor Rudolph was cutting up sod so he could pour concrete for his new patio and I loaned him a shovel and a hoe. About an hour later he leaned over the fence to show me the hoe, with the handle broken a foot above the head. He felt bad and was very apologetic but I wasn't too worried about it. The standard crew of his friends were helping him which usually consists of three to five Jamaicans drinking Guiness and offering Rudolph equal parts insults and advice. It's a lot of fun to watch.

Rudolph offered to buy me a new hoe and his friends started correcting each other on the best place to go to buy a hoe. "No, no mon, you wants to go to Ace Hardware", "Bulls**t, Home Depot has more hoes, I've seen them!" and so on. I pointed out that he didn't need to buy an entire new hoe, we could just buy a replacement handle, and his friends all turned to me with incredulous looks.

"No, no, you're in America now mon," one of them lectured me. "We don't repair, we replace!" Perhaps assuming I was a new immigrant, the short man leaning on my shovel shook his head and asked me with obvious disbelief, "Where are you from?"

"Wisconsin" I said with a chuckle. This caused all of them to say "Aaahhhh" in unison as if this explained everything. They all nodded, started muttering "Green Bay", and went back to work.

Ahhhh, America...

-Pierce

Posted by Pierce : 2:00 PM 0 comments | permalink