💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20191105 captured on 2022-04-28 at 17:36:00.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Jynx concluded his latest phlog entry by wondering if he was in "A life-change funk," adding, "I need to fix this... Job hunting does not take up the entire day."[1] Too true. That statement really struck a chord with me and got me thinking about my father. My Dad was laid off in 1984. He was a miner and his work mattered to him. A lot. He was really lost without it -- and so he took on a major project. We owned an old house with a crawl- space beneath it. Dad decided to dig out a basement. By hand. At one end of the crawlspace was a deeper area with a furnace and a coal chute. He started there. Every day, I'd come home from school and dirt would be flying up out of that coal chute. I'd go down and help for a couple of hours before supper. It was hard digging. The house, it turned out, was built over an old creek bed. The ground was dense, all tightly packed with smooth, round rocks. You loosened it up with a pick, sparks flying and hands numb from the shock, and then shoveled as best you could. It took weeks. Afterward, we tied in rebar, set up plywood forms, and poured new cement walls inside the old foundation walls. But here's the thing. We dug that hole right up to the inside of the foundation walls. I've always thought that the house should have fallen in on us. I don't know why it didn't. But if Dad knew anything, it was mining. He knew ledges and pit walls. I guess he knew that the foundation wouldn't give away because that creek bed was so solid. Anyways, I think digging that basement kept my Dad sane. He couldn't live without something to do. He was a miner. So he mined underneath the house. I still tease him about it. Not too long after we finished, he got the call he was waiting for. We sold the house, packed up all our stuff, and moved. Another place, another adventure. [1] gopher://leveck.us/0/Phlog/20191105.post