Conversations

I was biking home from the Mount Pleasant Pool earlier tonight when I heard a man ask another man when the best time to Chainsaw would be. CT noted the conversation as well, and being a woman who likes her relaxing peace and quiet we had a laugh

Reminds me of the summer of 1990 when I was working for a Landscaping company called Norm Breen Landscaping. I had collected some excess interlock bricks and screenings from a job and put a small interlock walkway from the front stairs to the driveway at my parents house. I lived at my parents house (and worked in Toronto) and my parents stayed at their cottage for the summer.
Then one Friday we had rented a Tamper at work. A Tamper is an incredibly loud gas powered earth pounding machine.
In those days I took the 1 ton truck home because it was getting vandalized in the industrial park outside the shop so it was up to me to get the tamper back to the rental shop on Saturday morning. Well to make a long story short we got into the beers after work on Friday so I figured "may as well tamp before I go to bed".

So there I am tamping up a storm noticing how the tamper makes nice soft turns on the brick feeling the powerful vibrations in my arms when I heard a sharp noise behind me.

It was Mr. Harris the neighborhood watchdog in his pajamas sleeping cap. He was mad and he had the look one could describe as dumbfounded. As I shut the tamper off to hear what he had to say I immediately noticed an eerie silence. It was that silence that happens late at night and when it is broken with a gas powered tamper... Let's just say that it could be troubling.

I tried to explain that I had to do it tonight but then I even lost my position that I had any business running a tamper in our "family" neighborhood at this hour so I asked him where you get those sleeping caps. He asked me to stop and told me that the sleeping cap was a family heirloom and then disappeared.

Back in those days I could actually lift one of those tampers onto the truck by myself... But that's always a fool move unless a hernia is what you desire.

Later I told my mom about what happened. She got a little smile on her face "Oh yea I bet you Harris would be out in a second". She then stopped look off in a daze and you could see her visualizing our neighbor zooming over to put a stop to me. My father on the other hand did not take it too well... He is of the position that he is always in the right to tell people to keep the noise down so having large noises coming from his house at ungodly hours destroys his position.

I figured I had to tell them cause I damn well knew that Harris would let then know as soon as he saw them.

No don't get me wrong I actually didn't mind Harris... It's good to have an overzealous neighbor always investigating everything unusual.

I actually mean that.