I gave up on professional ditch digging a long time ago and hesitate to return to
the amateur arena. My most recent ditch I instructed my son in the use of a
mattock. He found it a lot easier than with the garden trowel that he had started
with. Tools seem to run away from our property, or hide in weird places, and I
guess he could not find a real shovel. He had dug a pretty straight furrow with
the trowel, but it was nowhere deep enough for the drainage pipe. Sort of like DB
w/ his screw drivers on grout.

My most memorable ditch was when I was working at the Cargill salt mine in
Lansing, NY and was instructed to dig a ditch in frozen earth with a cold wind
blowing off Cayuga Lake. I think another apsect of growing older is that we have
found ourselves in enough places that we did not want to be in that we have
learned how not to be there. I certainly was not much enthused at being a ditch
digger, particularly when most of my friends were off in college. The cold. and
wet, combined with an asshole of a straw boss sort of put some compulsion in my
idea to move on. It was better than some other places I had found myself.

Mike Devonshire wrote:

> Of course I haven't found anyone willing to hand dig this thing (maybe everyone
> is   having this epiphany at the same time!?)

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][<en Follett
SOS Gab & Eti -- http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/5836