Dig it

Dig it
By Charles Kraus

[Assumed names; genuine responses]:

*Bobby here i can help with the digging sink holes call me 36__271-....
*Bill @  772- 4.....   I love to dig
*I'm interested in the gig. Do you alla have tools and everything? Is there any concrete I have to hey through?
*Hell even bring the back fill the holes all you need is the asphalt there
*My name is Hal I will fill those holes for 500. You reach me at +1206-82 ......
*Hi I can start asap pls let me know if and when you want me to start thanks Evan 206 244-1....
*my names Sev I will do the digging for you please let me know wen and were im a very hard worker 360 254-83....
*I can do job for you no problem. But I was hoping we could do at least 1000 ? Please get back to me thanks 

As the longtime owner of a suburban house in the Northwest, a house with driveway sinkholes,   I've had the opportunity to hire diggers.  They tunnel down 4' or 5' feet, replace the muck with rocks and gravel, then top off with a patch of asphalt.  We repeat this process about every eight or nine years.

You don't dig a hole because you need a break from piano practice.  Manual labor is something you do with your muscles, with your back, with your hands, but not delicately as if crafting.  It's performed firmly, significantly, forcefully.  Maybe there are individuals who prefer digging, but mostly practitioners dig because their other marketable skills are underdeveloped.  It's exhausting.

I believe the foreman we hired in 1992 stopped at one of those day-workers for hire street corners where people hang out waiting for cars to pull up, roll down the window and say things like, $10 an hour to mow the lawn.  He picked up a few strong backs and proceed to our driveway.  We were charged $700 plus a few rounds of pizza and cola.

A decade later we repeated the procedure.  Now there were two sinkholes.  Workers kept digging until they hit dry stuff, which was about 5 feet below the surface.  They repeated the established refill process.  As I recall, the total cost was about $1200.

Here we are in 2018, watching certain spots along our driveway begin to resemble oversized concave bowls.  It's been a particularly wet winter and the underground streams have turned into underground rivers, carrying away whatever was holding up portions of the driveway. 

It's digging time, but the hiring process has changed.  Manual laborers have smart phones.   Though very few pay to have their services listed, lots of diggers know how to respond to a virtual request for assistance.  It cost me $5 to place a 'gig' notice on Craigs List.

My advertisement described the driveway situation.  Pleading my age and reduced income, I wondered anyone would be interested in helping for $900.  The ad went live at about midnight.  By 12:30 a.m., I had two responses.  By morning, I had a dozen.  To date -- about a week later, I've heard from forty people interested in coming to dig.

There were people who said they could be over in an hour and have the job done before night fall.  Two 'girl friends' vouched for their boy friends.  One fellow felt he could complete the job for $500.  Another preferred to work alone.   Others had associates.

The respondents were men, all men, who wanted work.  Who were willing to spend hours, maybe days, performing the kind of punishing physical labor that might be assigned to members of a chain gang.  Perhaps the economy is improving for a certain segment of the economy, but I've got pages of emails from people who are not being pulled up by a rising tide.  They are willing to dig down to a rising water table.