Sidewalk

    As I have been going through my old diaries, (I am presently on 1986), one of the things that stands out as I read, is just how much energy and drive I had in my younger days.  In my recent readings, it mentions making our sidewalk.  While it is just a sidewalk, it really took a lot of time and work to complete (and at the same time I was also working at Forestry and on a myriad of other projects on our house and property, as well as being involved in a lot of social activities.

    I had a cement mixer, and I had to buy some bags of concrete, but the rest of the things I needed for the sidewalk I had to go out and get myself.  Luckily, those things were available free for the taking, in various locations in the Robson Valley.  For gravel, I had to drive out to an old gravel pit and shovel the gravel into my pickup truck and haul back to the house and unload it.  I had to then drive out to a different place where there was a sandbank beside a logging road and shovel the sand into the back of the truck, drive back home, and unload it.

    There was an area out in the Beaver River Valley where there were big flat pieces of shale, and so I drove out there, lift and load the heavy slabs onto the truck. 

    Once I had all those things back home, I had to dig out the area where the sidewalk would go, staked in some plywood forms for the edges, and then started mixing load of concrete, which I poured into the forms.  Because I was making the cement myself, I couldn’t make the whole sidewalk in one go, I had to just do one section at a time.   In the photo you can see strips of grass going across the sidewalk, those show the different sections I did.

    I couldn’t haul all of the sand, gravel, and shale I needed to complete the whole sidewalk at one time in the pickup, so each of those ingredients required several more trips out to the various places to get them.  

    Slowly over the summer, I worked on the sidewalk and finally got it done.  Building the sideway was just a blip along all of the many other building projects that never seemed to end, that I did in those days. 

    I am sure glad I spent time to write my diaries, because it has been interesting to be reminded of all those things I did when I was younger.  Reading about all the work I did to make the sidewalk does make me appreciate it more each time I now walk on it.

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