Eagle Project

One never realizes how much working at a desk has softened him until called upon to do actual hard, physical labor.  This message was brought home last weekend as Mr. Caleb needed assistance completing his Eagle Scout Project.

It sounds simple and benefits one of his favorite groups – the Newton-Conover football team.  Specifically, the project called for him to clean out the big ornamental flower bed in front of the football field, trim the bushes that had been ignored for the last 2 decades and become overgrown, and stain the concrete red (one of the school colors).

While we’re at it, let’s cure cancer and bring about peace in the Middle East, too.

We are very “hands-off” with regard to these projects.  The whole point of an Eagle Project – the culmination of one’s scouting career – is for the young man to learn to coordinate and supervise a project, line up the labor and materials needed, and pull it off before turning 18.

As with many projects, though, the paper projections are much easier than the actual implementation.  We were willing to help, though, especially as the deadline is looming.

So one (fortunately) cloudy Saturday morning we showed up promptly at 8 to begin work, tools in hand.

All tools except my bolt cutters, which would have been handy in cutting the lock off the gate because the Coach forgot to leave a key or otherwise make the space available.  The wait was only about 15 minutes, though.

With every project, there are unanticipated issues.  In this case, it was that the shrubs – Chinese holly – were so tough that the electric hedge trimmers we bought just kind of curled up and whimpered.  Fortunately, one of the dads out of the troop (there were lots of scouts helping by this time) went home and got (a) a chain saw and (b) a gas powered hedge trimmer.

Once again, we see that the right tools make a job possible.  There was a bit of artistic difference in just how much should be trimmed from the hedge – some of us advocating for a simple trim, whereas the guy with the chainsaw thinking more along the lines of “slasher flick”.  Of course, trimming a hedge is a lot like a haircut.   Once you’ve started trimming, you can’t change your mind.  Just like a haircut, though, a short cut will eventually grow out.

We hope.

Apparently Coach wasn’t all that thrilled with the outcome, to which I say “Tough bananas.   You should have had the gate unlocked on time.”

Karma has a way of working out.

So for the next few hours the clouds stayed in place but held off the rain and a group of dedicated volunteers chopped, hacked, dug and dragged the debris off to the ditch at the back of the school property for deposit to allow it to organically return to the earth.

And then, at the end of the day when we’d all gone home, we felt the impact of this type of foreign labor on our 50+ year old bodies. 

Fortunately, Ibuprophen comes in 500 count bottles and we had a new one.

But an Eagle project is almost done.  It’ll be something of which the school can be proud and will last for years, until it’s time for some other Eagle Scout to jump in and refurbish.