During the summer after my graduation from high school, I did some landscaping work for my uncle at his house. A few of my tasks included pulling out shrubs by tying them to a four-wheeler and speeding away, painting a chimney while suspended by a rope tied to a shoe horn and dredging the depths of a water channel to make the channel deep enough for a pontoon boat. All of those tasks were equally ridiculous, but the channel-dredging took the cake in terms of unpleasantness. I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled the bottom of a lake before, but take my word for it that there are smells out there that are worse than the worst smell you ever recall smelling.

What was worse than the smell, though, was the redistribution of the dregs. It had to be done by hand, shovelful after shovelful. My uncle decided that the slop from the bottom of the lake should be placed on his lawn, which at that point was barren, because he thought it would support grass growth (how that turned out is another story). The problem for me was that I was expected to distribute the Continue reading →