It took two of my brothers and me seven years, working a week or two a year, to dam the middle fork of the Juanite and create a pond just below the cabin at Snowbird, in the mountains of North Carolina.
Pop, Dave and I had distinct jobs.
Pop, the oldest, cooked and cleaned up. Dave drove the equipment, a cat on some trips, a front end loader on others. I was the youngest, still in my early and mid-40’s, so I did the unskilled labor, dragging chain and hauling rock, mostly.
Trees that had fallen in what would become the pond had to be chained to the cat and pulled out. I didn’t mind dragging chain, that had to be done. But hauling five-gallon buckets of rock out of the creek, up the steep upstream side of the dam, was another matter.
Dave would drive the cat or loader anywhere, including quagmires where he got stuck. When that happened, and it happened a lot, he’d sit there, like a king on his throne, and yell for me, “Pat! Bring some rock!”
After I had carried five or six buckets of rock to the cat or loader and thrown the rocks under the tracks Dave would say something like, “Good, good! Five or six more buckets ought to do it.”
We finished the dam in 1990, almost 30 years ago. We were younger then and we could, and did, worked from first light until it got too dark to see, trying to get as much done while we could, before it rained. When it rained, even a little bit, the work site was slick on slick and we couldn’t move dirt.
To give us more time to work Pop would cook breakfast well before dawn. He timed it so there would be gray streaks in the sky when we finished eating, just enough light for Dave and me to get at it.
One morning, just like always, Dave and I rolled out, dressed, went to the table, and started eating. We finished before it started getting light outside so we sat there, enjoying a few minutes more of rest. We sat there and sat there and it still wasn’t light, it wasn’t even starting to get light.
And then someone look at their watch. It was 3 a.m.
Coming Monday: Flacks