Chapter IV continued.

Just beyond our back yard an endless parade of construction equipment worked day after day,for what seemed like forever.Each morning that it didn't rain would find me out on the back step,as early as I could manage to get there.I was always distracted at breakfast,as I ate cereal,grapefruit,bacon and eggs.I could often hear the first dump trucks arriving and I didn't want to miss a thing.

For a long time there was a big,bright orange shovel  parked at the end of Sumner street,right across from our step.They must have been using it to trench out the curbs,and it didn't stay there all day long,but that's where they parked it at night.Every morning I simply had to be on our back step before the worker started up this machine.I was entranced by the way smoke puffed from it's stack when it was first started.Big balls of smoke,jumping out one after the other,until they became a steady stream.It told me it would not be long before the arrival of the other trucks.All day long they came and went,mostly bright orange and yellow,but the dump trucks could be any color of the rainbow.Each made it's own sound,together not quite a cacophony,not quite a symphony;growls and grinding and roaring,cement scraping the inside of mixer drums.The gentle swish as the driver washed out the cement mixers trough with a hose.Gravel sliding from upraised dump bodies of the trucks.The harsh and loud bang of dump trucks gates swinging closed when they were done unloading.Earth falling into the back of dump boxes.Pebbles,clay,loam,each a different sound.Men shouting,and I suppose swearing,though there seemed far less of that back then.Shovels in earth,hammers on nails or wooden stakes,drills and saws.Beautiful,raw music.The machines seemed to grow out of the ground,there were so many.A forest of earth movers and a whole gang of monkeys who lived in that forest from early morning until supper time.Gradually our community came together.

Crandall Street,like most of the other streets was gravel,just like a country road.It seemed pocked with holes,each of which would hold a small puddle some of the time.Few cars came up Crandall Street then.Most of the traffic was construction traffic.Sometimes the street would get dry and dusty.Clouds of dust could foul the air and get all over everything.But the city had a solution for that.An ancient looking truck,that had once been yellow but that was covered from end to end in an oily film,streaked and spotted with tar,and topped with the latest settling of dust.Even it's windows were dirty,so I wondered how the driver could see to drive.The whole back of this old truck was a tank filled with sticky tar.This truck was frail looking,not moving very fast,as it passed up and down the roads spreading out tar which smelled awful,but cut down the dust.I thought of that truck as being sort of like an old man,spending the last of it's time in existence,wondering when it would break down for good,giving it's life so that our our new community could be born.