The Rock Wall

It was always one home improvement project after another with my parents. Mom and Dad planned to turn the garage into a family room; there was the sidewalk widening project; followed by building a flower bed bordered by black and white speckled river rock.

Working with Dad for nearly a month, I helped dig post holes and hammer redwood planks in place as we built a fence along the side of our yard. Shortly, there after we began hanging wood paneling and gold etched mirrors in the front room and down the hallway.

But the first project I remember after we moved into the new house on Redwood Drive was a rose garden my folks planned. It involved the use of a backhoe and creating a four-foot deep six-foot wide trench the full-length of our backyard.

Pa Sanders brought his backhoe over and dug at the hard earth for hours at a time for nearly two weeks. I had to stay on the cement slab attached to the house while watched Pa work the big machine.

Only eight-years-old, I thought it was fun to watch. Little did I know how much that trench would play in my life as I would learn to dread weekends for the next two-years.

As soon as Pa took the backhoe away, that’s when the hard work began. I helped move the green serpentine stones from the pile Dad and I had gathered at the river.

Each Saturday and Sunday, I found myself outside dropping rock after rock into the trench. The rocks were then stacked atop each other and cemented into place, creating a wall, taller than myself.

Eventually, the wall formed a barrier from the fence line we shared with the owners of Camp Marigold. The campground’s fence was a small, simple wooden affair, painted barn-red.

Before I knew it, the rock wall we were building was taller than Dad. It now took both of my parents to cement the rocks in place.

The height concerned the owner of Camp Marigold and he complained to my folks about it. He said several of the stones from the wall were leaning against his fence and threatened to knock it over, though none of the rocks touched it at any point along the boundary line.

With the complaining, came word from Mom and Dad that all our hard work was for nothing. My parents received paperwork instructing them to pull down the wall to prevent it from tumbling down on Camp Marigold’s fence.

It took some time to resolve the fence-wall issue. The outcome was that the wall was only half-torn down.

Now I found myself helping lift those same green stones out of the trench and carrying them to Dad’s pick-up. Once filled, the old Studebaker, Mom and Dad and I returned to the river’s edge where we first picked them up.

It would be another few months and the passing of my tenth birthday before the project would come to an end. One early Saturday morning Pa reappeared with his backhoe and within a few hours, he had filled the trench in.

From that point on, Mom and Dad never mentioned the stone wall again. Stranger still, not one rose-bush was ever planted in the area that had once been designated a rose garden.

For a couple of years, anyone who went into our backyard could see the top layer of green stone as it protruded between the dirt Pa had moved back into place and Camp Marigold’s fence. It would go away as well, as I helped Dad build a six-foot fence along the entire length of our backyard about two-years later.