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The cement truck driver added to our education by pointing out that 5 yards of concrete weighs 20,000 pounds. It’s not that we were complete novices around cement, sand and gravel. We have poured footings, built rock walls, patched old water tanks, shoveled out feed bunks and irrigation ditches, and driven over lots of concrete cattle guards. But alas, in retrospect, we put too much faith in plywood and drywall screws.
We built a form. It looked good, but then again I live in a land where the illusion of a fence is considered as good as five strands of bob wire and a post every eight feet. We stack things against rusty wire and make extensive use of stays fashioned from willow branches, mesquite limbs, string, BBQ grills, car parts, hoe handles, cardboard, pillowcases and coyote hides.
The form was to be for a free standing stem wall, 4’ x 2’ x 16’, thus 4.74 cu. yards. It was plumbed, braced and photographed for the archives. 7 a.m. on the dot the giant concrete truck rumbled in. The driver backed up to the spot and swung his long chute out over the open top of our form. It looked like the dull oviposter on a gargantuan wasp squatting over a tarantula’s hole.
In retrospect, I realize the driver had probably seen “cowboy projects” before and anticipated excitement. “Are you ready?” he asked gleefully.
“Let’er rip!” I said like a man in front of a firing squad.
Standing next to a cement mixer truck as tons of gravely concrete rolled down the chute can rattle your brain. As the cement reached the 2’ level, the sides of the form began to bulge. Will asked, “Do you have any cardboard?” An interesting question, I remembered thinking. Something General Custer might have asked as the Indians closed in on him.
We tried to stem the bulge by driving stakes in the ground but the gray mass simply wedged its shoulder under the form and lifted it off the ground!
“STOP!” The churning mixer stopped. Another 900 lbs. of concrete clattered into the form. A tide of lava surged from underneath and rolled the length of 2 shovel handles before it sludged to a stop at Will’s feet.
“Mauna Loa?” he repeated, “Never seen it.”
“Yeah,” I said, “But now you don’t have to…”
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