That's MISTER Gorbechev to You!

When Mike Pauro saw what I was doing today he said: "There's only one way to finish a job, and that's to start it." You see, there was, I say WAS, a reinforced concrete pony wall outside the loading dock that needed to be removed. It was part of the enclosure that Dennis Lonergan built for garbage cans. Mike knew that this is the spot we chose to allow the cabin owners association to put up a storage shed.

The cabin owners have a pancake breakfast coming up this Saturday, so today I cleaned out all the spare lumber and junk that surrounded the enclosure, and emptied it of the cabin owners' chairs stored therein. Then I removed the hinged roof/lid. The thought was that if I set out a few sledge hammers, everyone could take a few whacks at it during breakfast and it would be knocked down by the end of the day. Naturally I had to take a few whacks at it beforehand.

As I swung the 16 lb. sledge, my thoughts wandered to all the guys that whined about how hard it was going to be; so I kept swinging. I also realized that nobody would want to work on their day off, so I kept swinging. I remembered that Rich is bringing Jason up to work tomorrow and he could clean up the pieces, so I kept swinging. Everyone complained about how long it would take to remove the wall, so I kept swinging.

So today, on MY day off, I broke up the whole wall by myself. No, it wasn't easy, especially not with my broken back still healing, but so what? The whole project, from the time I started cleaning until I removed the last block was only three hours; by myself mind you. I didn't rush, I just worked slow and steady. Mike was right. The only way to finish a job is to start it.

That's the moral of the story. The point of the story is that I now reserve the right to rib the guys about how they made such a big deal out of this. Now that the space is cleared, they can assemble the shed after the pancake breakfast.

I found a treasure hidden inside one of the cinder blocks of the wall, encased in concrete. A little orange plastic bottle way down at the bottom.