I'm gonna rock this town

The prison work camp gave me a week furlough and I've used it to do one thing ... work.

Nothing like getting away from work to work.

What happened to vacations? They used to be cool. I remember those days when the parental units would pose our yearly vacation to Lil' Sis and I. We'd hover over the dinner table like rabid hyenas as ma threw down three McDonald's burgers - to say they were little cheap is like saying Nathan Lane is just a little gay; and these were not the Big Macs mind you, just those asphalt-flavored cardboard-thin patties - and the four of us would battle, the last two losers having to share the third burger (and you wonder why my competitive spirit goes into overdrive when I'm playing Sorry!). Then Pop would drain his Old Milwaukee, clank the side of it with the plastic spork Ma stole from Mickey Ds and belch to get our attention (it's a pretty officious burp, if I may say so, and I aspire to teach my soon-to-be-here youngun to deliver with the same gusto).

"This year, whelps, we're going to..." Ma would drum on her two empty Boons bottles to gather excitement. Sis and I would bounc like baby kangaroos after a half dozen Red Bulls, "Mono Lake, California. We're camping."

"Again? Do we have to catch our own food again while you and Ma head into town?"

Those were vacations - if you call setting up tents, fighting off the kamikaze bugs intent on sucking the last vile of blood from my left calf and starting fires to stay warm a vacation (all that was missing on these camping trips was Jeff Probst telling us "in this game fire represents life"). This, working like a Arizona Department of Transportation road construction hump, is not.

Take yesterday, for example. Because I'm a cheap bastard not willing to shell out a few bones for new ones, I moved some dirty pink rock from my back yard to fill gaps in my front yard rocks. It didn't dawn on me that maybe the rocks from the back were dirty and lost their vibrancy years ago compared to the bright hue of those stones up front. As I began to desegregate the rock colors, mixing in the old with the old, I noticed the color became a muddy shade of pink rather than a stream of muted rose-petal pink (damn right, I know my pinks and I'm OK with that, so back off homophobes). I thought the dirty rocks from the back were claiming pockets of land for themselves rather than playing nicely and melding in with the others. The plan worked about as well as a castrated dude in a sperm bank, I took three loads from the back to the front and was still left with gaping space of dirt among pink rocks. Either way you cut it, I'm going to be cutting a check for more rock. That hurts. If there's one thing I'm morally opposed to, besides the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series (baseball is better with them always losing, everything needs a whipping boy), it's buying something that is everywhere. Hell, if you live out here and have pink rock, I might just pack up the Green Machine and swipe your stones for my yard. Consider yourself warned.

I get that from Pop (cheapness, not stealing rocks), I think, along with this desire for yard work. As I was wheeling out that last load of stone I realized this project wasn't any different than when he wanted to level our basement floor. Most homes in Idyllwild were built up with foundations comprised of cement blocks and mortar leveling the home from there, not on cement pads as in the city. This often meant sloping dirt basements. That's what we had a half-level dirt basement, with other the half creating a crevice wide enough to hide a buffalo. His bright idea was to fill that slope with dirt so our basement would be level, and even create a room of which I could move into (his real feelings revealed if you ask me - just hide me away like Sloth from "The Goonies", and also a plan that never materialized).

It was a weekend project that took two weeks and a lot of swearing. I owe my colorful vocabulary to those two weeks. With Pop wielding the pick axe like he was John Henry the steel driving man and me throwing endless shovel fulls of dirt into the hole, we moved like hunting team consisting of a platypus and a mountain lion. He only caught me a dozen times playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt with the toe of my Traxx.

Dude even had a level so he could tell me how far we were from being done. And believe me, I tried to cheat that shit.

"Come here Pop, I think we're done. That bubble's ass is sitting dead-on balls center," I said, not telling him that I had shoved a stick under one side and covered the said implement with dirt to camouflage my sneakiness.

"Uh-huh," he said, downing another Old Milwaukee. "Let's see what happens when I shove this stick here up your nose?"

I did my share of complaining then, as I do now, but when I get out there and the sweats running down my ass and my hands are dirtier than proctologists I can't help but find myself enjoying the work. Back then, behind the veneer of kid anger for being forced to work on a weekend while my friends were running through town looting gift shops, I think I enjoyed that time with Pop. And now, as I gear up for some more landscaping detail tomorrow, I can see my own freeloader playing on grounds I groomed for it and hope to one day shove a pick in his or her hand and yell, "get to work, whelp! I got beer to drink."

Ah, such fond memories.