A few days later, the UPS driver carried a heavy long box to my front door. “It’s a bridge,” I told him as he lay the box on my front porch. I tipped him $10, and he smiled. “I’m glad I’m not the one putting this together.” How right he turns to be… some 50 glasses of water, later.
Day Ten
It was good that I took a few days off from working in the pond. I had developed a good understanding of why people hire others to do a major job—they have money and are smart! I’ve heard that even roofers and masons refuse to work on their own houses. Instead, they hire someone else, so they can continue to love their house and avoid family crises. That was not my situation, however. I carried the heavy parcel of my bridge (in pieces) to the back cement patio, eager to do something other than heave stones and dig in the water—and to do it in the cool shade of the deck with the grapevines all around it.
After a few hours of unpacking everything and lining up the wooden pieces, I asked my wife to join me and look at the assembly instructions. The careful order in which I placed everything turned out to be wrong. Meticulously, both of us rearranged the natural-color wooden pieces in the correct order. The directions emphasized the importance of first putting together the two arched lumber pieces that would support the structure. The bridge had three pieces for each side, with metallic hinges to secure the ends of the individual segments. I began to do work that was entirely different work from the pond efforts, inserting long bolts and tightening them with nuts and washers at one end. At first I used a screwdriver, but my hands tired quickly. My wife brought me an electric drill, which made the mounting of precisely cut wood go faster and be less painful. “Less painful” because there were hundreds of screws to be put in place, and too often the pre-drilled holes were off enough to make me struggle. One by one the deck boards were strongly in place. Next I added the little rails which proved to have a mind of their own. All the same, in precisely 14 hours the bridge was ready to be carried and placed over the dam. I could hardly wait until the next day, when we would do this!
Day Eleven
With little ceremony, my wife and I placed the bridge above the unsightly dam. My wife stood back and I joined her in mute admiration of the beauty in front of us. I was choked with emotion. It was incredible to see how much a simple little bridge added to a rectangular hole surrounded by excavated mud and piles of dry branches. And it had only cost me $214 and one day of work. I took pleasure in putting stone pillars to anchor the bridge. My wife took a lot of pictures of me working there, and then both of us went to the deck for a view of the entire site. I felt like a winner and took my wife out to celebrate with a juicy steak and a glass of wine. The waiter noticed my thirst and put a carafe of water on the table. What I needed at last was fish! Not to eat, but to adopt. However before I could get to that, I once again noticed something wrong with my pond…
This reminds me of a Chinese tale: Once there was a very poor man who lived in shack. For his birthday, some friends presented him with a pair of ivory chopsticks. They were so beautiful that the man decided to buy an ornamented porcelain bowl to match the chopsticks. Before long he decided that both objects had to stay on an equally beautiful table, and he went back to work harder to buy one, inlaid in gold. Looking at those elegant objects that grossly contrasted with the rest, the man went back and found a harder job that paid more, but enabled him to lay an oak floor on top of the dirt floor. Obviously, the rest of the room looked horrible, and the man worked even harder and opened his own business. Soon, the room was rebuilt with beautiful moldings, arched windows and a floral chiseled solid wood door. To make a long story short, the man prospered in order to build a villa around his chopsticks that changed his life for the better and saved him from poverty. That was what was happening with my beautiful bridge and the ugly looking pond that desperately still needed improvements.
The idea of building a terraced bank had been in my head, so I began by shoveling the dirt and mud around the right bank closer to my house. Soon the improvised catwalk became a narrow path that connected the bridge with the cascade. If anyone wanted to get closer and look at the fish, this would be the best route. Since mud and dirt kept sliding on my path, I improvised a retaining devise that consisted of a long plastic barrier that landscapers use to contain their flower beds. Each other two feet or so, I nailed the wide strap with sharpened sticks against the hilly side of the bank. It looked good, and encouraged, I began to level the first terrace above the firm strap. But spreading muddy dirt around was not exactly the sturdy filler I needed.
Day Twelve
Driving around, I saw a yellow bulldozer digging a house foundation at the end of my street. The almost petrified clay was pushed by the dinosaurish looking machine into a yellow-red pile, exactly the kind of dirt I needed for my firm terrace. Seeing many workers around, I tried to talk to them, but none spoke English. One did understand the word “foreman” and led me to a young overweight man with a good disposition. He grasped what I wanted, but said this was not his house and he didn’t know who the owner was. But he knew the phone number of the contractor, and minutes later I was talking to a pleasant man who gave me another phone number. I called that number, and to my surprise, it was a woman architect who gavs me permission to take “a few wheelbarrows” of the soil. Pleased, I went home and prepared my Saturn Vue to do the job, meaning I lowered the back seats and covered the entire area with a blue tarp. Outside it was close to 100 degrees and the more water I drank, the more tired I felt.
I drove my car to the mountain of clay and, shovel in hand, began loading it into the car. I drove back home, parking in front of the house and unloaded the clay into the wheelbarrow. At that point I was so exhausted that I had to stop and take a long rest, barely feeling my irregular pulse. I knew something was wrong with me besides my old age and lack of work training. I wondered if anything was simple in this world. When I decided to make a pond, everything was easy in my mind: enlarge the little stream and the pond would be created. I had seen similar ponds before and I never thought twice about their construction. But look at me, hauling clay from a neighbor, having to get it into the wheelbarrow and then all the way to the pond. The trip made me feel like I had no air and that I could faint any moment. I took a long rest, sipping water through a straw without any joy.
Despite my state of collapse I made six trips that day and built another terrace on top of the existing one. My mouth was dry, regardless of how much water I drank, my lungs were so tired that I was wheezing, and my pulse was almost undetectable. I was sure my muscles were out of oxygen. I finished unloading the clay, and lay down on the grass under a tree and stayed there until my breath and heartbeats returned to normal. I thought about the many wonders I’ve seen all over the world and realized that I had never considered the huge amount of work that was involved in building a Versailles, or a Newport mansion, never mind the Chrysler and Empire buildings. It’s just amazing how we all walk for years in Manhattan and never look up to see the unbelievable moldings on the highest building floors or the ornamental roof lines. We take so many things for granted, like a cathedral, for instance, and miss the ingenuity and incredible work needed to build it. Children should be taught in school about such wonders so they gain an early respect for them. Anyhow, the end of the day coincided with my pond being completed and my wife being very upset because I had begun to cough very loudly and often. She clearly tuned into my destructive desire to do more than I was capable of.
Day Thirteen
My severe cough grew stronger and more painful overnight. It was a dry cough that made my lungs almost explode with the effort to stop the coughing attacks. Yet, in spite of my wife’s advice, I was determined to continue my work, drinking water and coughing my lungs and my brains out. A quick visual morning inspection from the deck revealed that the pond and two terraces looked good, but the mess of debris, dry branches, piles of broken vines and stumps pulled out of water, still presented an ugly view. Over-riding my wife’s protests, I returned to the pond to do “the easy part,” which in fact was another miserable experience. Cutting everything in smaller pieces and spreading it all in the forest proved harder than I had thought. Also it seemed to aggravate my cough. By the time I was finished, I was covered with black dust, bruises, bleeding cuts, and countless mosquito bites, and I was on the edge of total collapse. The lethal combination of scorching sun, humidity, and my weak body had me beyond exhaustion. I tried to compensate by drinking more water.
In spite of a longer rest period and increased water consumption, I didn’t feel good, but continued to make frequent trips to the pond. Finally I declared myself satisfied with my work. Fortunately, a drizzling rain began; the prediction (which I took with a grain of salt) was that it would extend over a few days. If it did, then I’d be able to admire how the overflowing pond let the extra water exit through the channels I’d constructed around the bridge. I could not stop admiring my pond! My wife shared my enthusiasm but warned me not to do any more hard work with that painful cough. Still, when she told me that Lou emailed her that the next Saturday he would be in Shelbyville with his fish truck (“Cash Only” concludes his message), I felt like a child before Christmas: when the fish were in the pond, my lifelong dream would become a reality and my hard work would finally have paid off!
Day Fourteen
What a glorious day it was. My wife and I took a large cooler and a bucket with us, supposing that we would need them to transport the fish. After almost one hour of driving, guided by the GPS, we arrived at the hardware store where Lou told us we would find him. The town was small, and everybody seemed to know each other; all stayed away from my non-stop coughing. It was a good opportunity for me to study the natives, many of whom have never lived in any other place or been outside of their immediate Bible Belt area. Most of them were slightly overweight, but in good spirits and driving colorful trucks with stickers, like “My insurance is Smith & Wesson” and “Be prepared, Jesus is coming.” We walked inside the store and asked about Lou. All fingers pointed across the street to a gas station. So we went there and found a line of people waiting patiently. None of them carried buckets like us. My wife said it feels like we’re in “Close Encounters of a Third Kind,” when people are lined up beside their trucks, waiting…waiting…waiting. I never saw the movie. Aware of my cough annoyance, I kept my distance from the patient people.
Minutes later, Lou pulled into the gas station, driving an old truck with a number of large round containers in the back. He was an older dignified man who looked the way I’d imagine a fish farmer would look, with blue overalls that were tight around his belly, a hunter’s red cap, heavy boots and unshaven face. “OK, folks,” was all he said. We walked up to the truck, not realizing that a long line had formed. No one said a thing, but realizing what we’d done, we moved to the end of the line as Lou prepared for his first customer. I have been so impressed with people’s politeness in Kentucky. Since I moved to Louisville, I have not once heard anyone honking; in New York and New Jersey, honking is a sport for the masses.
One by one, each person walked up to Lou, told him how many fish and what kind they wanted, and he opened a specific tub and scooped the requested fish and some water into a large plastic bag. It was fascinating to see how he got out of his cistern exactly the amount of fish and immediately announced how much money it would. When my turn came, I said between coughs, “I think ten bluegills,” and Lou asked how large the pond was. When he heard the size, he advised me to buy twenty-five bluegills, ten bass and fifty minnows. I agreed, while with a speed I could hardly follow, Lou had in his hand a plastic bag with the two fish species. “Twenty-five dollars!” he said as he poked a pipe in my fish bag and blew oxygen into it After he tightened the end of the bag he handed it to me and took the money without counting it “Next!” he shouted. Thus, very unceremoniously, I became the owner of 35 small fish swimming confusedly on the bottom of transparent bag. I asked Lou how long the oxygen would last in the bag. “Three hours!” was the answer he bellowed as he filled someone else’s order.
I placed the precious bag in the opened cooler in the back seat and decided to drive straight home. On the way back I fell asleep at the wheel a few times. Even “sleeping” for few split seconds felt like hours to me. Very strange indeed. My wife realized what was happening and immediately asked me to stop the car; she drove us back. My eyes kept closing and I took short naps when my cough stopped. Once in a while I looked at my fish that were no larger than two inches. I felt a great responsibility on my shoulders. I could not wait to go to the pond, with my wife taking photos to immortalize the moment of the fish entering their new home. I looked at them one more time, realizing that 35 little beings would populate the pond I made with such effort.
At the edge of the pond I poured some pond water in the bag to let the fish acclimate to it, and minutes later, my wife had the camera ready and said “Go!” I knelt and let the fish roll from the bag into the pond. The camera clicked as the fish disappeared in the mud. Such smart troopers they were—I could not see any of them.
Understanding their shock and worries, I left them alone for an hour, and then returned with some fish food. I sprinkled a few granules and to my utter surprise, one darted out from behind some stones and gulped the food. Others followed and from then on, it was the same routine when I came to the pond. The larger fish swam slowly to check me out. Bribed with food, he faced me. Seconds later some other fish came just like little puppies and then dashed away if I moved. Others came from unexpected places to check out my presence. This all amused me and made me happy, seeing such lively activity in my own pond.
The show put on by my fish was so enjoyable that I decided to bring a wooden bench and place it next to the bridge. Then I could sit comfortably without trying to suppress my loud coughing and follow the fish activity. No doubt, the larger one was the leader; sometimes he was displeased and chased the others who dashed for cover inside the two-story shelter I’d made for them and covered with wood and stones. Some of them seemed to live there most of the time and came out only to eat the food. I looked at the dense net above the shelter and felt that I had done everything I could to protect them. I continued to look at my fish and try to figure out how smart they were, as determined by their moves and attitude toward me. In no time, they took ownership of the entire pond, some of them preferring different spots, others constantly swimming around, and a few chasing each other’s tails. When the fish make sudden moves, they glittered in the sun. What I saw was beautiful, exactly as I had always dreamed.