Sparky's Back Yard
Page 6
by Sparky

Mañana Tunnel Completed!

The Mañana Tunnel was completed and installed on August 4, 2003.  The name comes from the way the tunnel was built.  The large stone was drilled several dozen times approximately 5 years ago, in preparation for punching out the center.  This approach proved to be much more work than Jim originally estimated.  Not to mention about a dozen carbide drill bits that were quickly dulled in the process.  It has been lying around unfinished for all this time, and then, jest the other day, Gloria told Jim that it would look reel good if it got finished and put in front of something where the train could pass through it, so here it is.

When Jim first started on it, he drilled a bunch of holes through it, thinking that he could drill about 500 holes and the middle piece would jest fall out, and then it would look jest like when they drill holes in a mountain and put in dynamite and blow it up to make the hole.  After he found out that he got about 2 or 3 holes before the carbide drill bit got dull, and it took about 5 minutes for each hole, and the lecktrik drill got reel hot after drilling only 2 holes, he decided to jest wait until "Mañana" to finish it.

The other day, Jim got out his circular saw and a diamond saw blade and cut through the middle of a lot of the holes he had drilled into the rock, and after about an hour and lots of sparks squirting out behind the smoke that was also squirting out of that circular saw, he finally got a slot cut through from both sides, kind of like a rectangle shape where he wanted the tunnel hole to end up.

Then he got a little jackhammer that runs off of some special air that he makes with his air compressor, and he chiseled away at that tunnel hole for a couple of more hours and finally got the hole to look jest like in the picture, so the trains can get through it.  Then he lugged it with Gloria's two-wheel hand truck to where he installed it.

Gloria got that hand truck for Mother's Day one year, to make her work a little easier.  On another Mother's Day she got her own wheelbarrow, and the year before she got her own heavy duty wagon.  (When Jim went to buy that wagon, a wasp stung him on the elbow as he was entering the wagon store, and he wasn't even doing anything.  That's why he don't like wasps, either). That way, when she helps with the yard construction, it jest makes her work a little easier.  Jim is still looking fer a special recliner that he ken use outside, and also, maybe a waterproof TV and VCR to make his job a little easier.

Jim got busy doing something so he let me finish the retaining wall he had started the other day.  I got out my Powerful Steam Shovel and easy chair and got to work.  It was reely jest a piece of cake.  I jest scooped up them rocks one-by-one and put them on top of the part of the wall that Jim had started, and in no time at all I had it almost finished, as shown in the top picture at right, but I ran out of more rocks to finish it up.

Jest as I was walking around to make sure everything was okay up to that point, a big flying bug landed on top of the highest rock, and the whole thing came crashing down as shown in the other picture at right.  To say I got disgusted would jest be an understatement.  In fact, I jest went in the house and took a nap.  You ken see what the wall looked like, after Jim finished it, in picture #1 in the album below.

Big Bridges Installed By Powerful Steam Shovel

As you ken see by some of the pictures in the picture album above, my Powerful Steam Shovel was indispensable in the installation of the 4 big bridges over Fearsome Gorge.

This time, the incident I'm about to reveal really wasn't my fault!  It started out innocently enough.

Gloria bought a bottle of knee pills to keep her knee from getting sore.  The little box the pills came in had a little blinking light blinking out through the front in the middle of a picture of some guy's knee that musta been sore, but to make it look even more sore, they put in this little blinking light that was on a lecktronical thingy with some batteries and some other lecktronical things.

Since I am always the curious type, I tore the old box apart and got the blinking light thingy so I could put it on the back of my wagon that we are going to go to the ice cream store with, as soon as I can figger out how to safely tow it behind my Powerful Steam Shovel, as shown on the previous page.  That way I'll have a sort of tail light to warn drivers not to run over us.

Well, we also got to thinking that it would also be nice to have some water in case any of us would get thirsty, so I got a bicycle water bottle and taped a long hose to it so we can drink without having to stop in traffic.  Then I got the idea that we could put the little blinking light thingy on the bottle with some lecktric tape (since it's a lecktriconical device), and put both it and the bottle on back, behind the back seat, and we would have a reel simple invention.

Well, it fit on the back of the wagon reel good, as shown in the picture.  (I had to simulate the blinking light, where the red dot is, cuz I couldn't take a picture of it blinking).  Since we was working on the Powerful Steam Shovel, and needed to do some more construction work in the back yard, the wagon project was put aside for now, and the water bottle with the blinking light must have fell on the floor.

Gloria must have been cleaning up and threw it in the trash, and it would have looked like the simulated picture below, that I made to show what it might have looked like in the trash after she threw it away.

Well, several days later, we saw it (the water bottle with the blinking light) on the news, out at the City Dump, surrounded by fire trucks, cop cars,  and a big black truck.  They brought in some experts that know all about suspicious things, and in the end they ran over it with one of those City Dump Bulldozers that smooshes down all the trash.  They could have jest brought it back to me to use on the back of my wagon and saved themselves a lot of trubble!!!

Well, that's it for me, the next time I find something that blinks with a little red light, I'm just gonna leave it alone, unless I can think of something else to use it for.