FORM VS. FUNCTION

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Soon, there was powerful stench coming from the vegetable plot-to-be as Marv trundled back and forth with the front loader maw dribbling black, smelly compost. The thought crossed his mind to scoop up a load, fill it with petunias and park the machine next to the trailer park entrance. It would have been no worse than some bathtub-planters he had seen. Naw, he decided, he needed the machine for other things.

"Great stuff," Marv shouted over the roar of the machine.

"Yeah. I keep thinking of the turkeys behind all this. You know, maybe we should plant sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes go good with turkey."

"What about fertilizer?" Marv asked.

"Probably wouldn't hurt."

"Hey, I know," Marv offered. "Fish make good fertilizer and the beach is loaded with dead Alewives. I'll just go down and get us a couple of loads."

Before long, the vegetable plot was knee deep in sand, fish and fowl droppings. And it needed a fence.

"Gotta keep the deer out," Poppa said. "Let's get some steel fence posts, a ladder, and a sledge hammer."

"Naw, I got a better idea," Marv announced calmly.

Soon the front-loader bucket was resting on top of a fence post held upright by Poppa. Marv engaged the hydraulics to lower the front bucket, and the post slowly sank a into the sandy soil. After staking out the ground, Poppa eased onto the lip of the loader bucket and rode to the utility shed to load up rolls of old snow-fencing.

About the time Poppa and Marv began stretching fence around the perimeter of the plot, Marv's son Heff (short for Heffner, named after an idol from his father's salad days) asked if he could use the front-loader to get some evergreens from a neighbor.

"They said I could clear out the last of their Christmas trees. We could use a nice screen along one side of the property," Heff explained. He, it appeared, believed in form as much as function.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print