Randall's Blog

Well, the stone has been spread around the bottom of the pool and I have been working on building frames to hold the garden soil. I made two out of pine and one out of cedar - we will see how they hold up. I have started some seeds in the greenhouse as well.

Here I was trying to make sure I had the true South so I could orient my boxes (not sure if this would make ANY difference but I was a fun diversion of sorts). Yeah, I know I'm a geek of sorts.

This is the first box under construction - pretty simple stuff here. 2x6's & 2x4's and some screws.

When it was done I stapled some weed block fabric to the bottom.

Here are all three boxes ready for some garden soil.

I ordered 5 yards of garden soil (and some topsoil to fix the yard) from the same folks that sold me the stone.

Soil is a lot easier to move around. I made this quick shoot to direct the soil to the boxes. I just started but it seems to be working well.

R

My next bright idea was to make the 24' above ground pool in the yard into a garden. I reasoned that the steel pool walls would make a good garden fence. It's dug slightly down into the ground to level it out and this is an advantage as a garden fence. One problem is that it tends to accumulate water when it rains (even without a liner). This is what it looked like last Spring:

I came upon the idea that if I could put down a layer of stone I could put raised beds on top of the stone and if I did it right the water might even irrigate the garden beds kinda like a giant grow box. I calculated that I would need 10-12 yards of stone. This is a lot of stone. Moving it by hand would be a chore. I was thinking about ramps for a wheelbarrow and the like but decided that I needed to just get it in the pool and not putter around. I went with the recommendation of the people who sold me the stone and rented a small "skidsteer" loader to put the stone from the pile into the pool. (I didn't risk bringing the truck near the pool for fear of the potential of damaging the septic system.) It all arrived last Sunday - a nice day to do outside work.

Then the problems started... I should have known that a 6000 pound loader would sink into the rain soaked lawn but thought it wouldn't be a problem. I got it stuck on the FIRST load. I guess I can scratch "loader operator" from my potential careers.

The guy that rented the skidsteer came over and got it unstuck and gave me some tips on how to proceed without problems. I did follow his advice and was able to put in a few more loads (while making a total mess of the lawn). Unfortunately, I tried to go a slightly different route to the pool (by only a few feet) and got myself into a situation that I couldn't get out of. That machine seemed to have a mind of its own. It wouldn't go in the direction I wanted it to go. It was happy going backwards (towards the wetter part of the lawn) but wouldn't go up even the slightest incline. I struggled with it for a few hours and just gave up. It was NOT a happy experience. I was thinking wrecker with a really big winch or something...

Fortunately the guy who rented me the skidsteer was really nice AND much more experienced in operating this little beast. On Monday morning he got it unstuck and even finished putting the stone in the pool for me. Many thanks to New Scotland Sales and Rental for their understanding and help. I have been working on spreading out the stone evenly in the pool - still a task.

I have been working on a new project. It was Andy's idea originally to make the porch on the back of the garage into a greenhouse. I had the people who replaced the windows save the the old ones because I thought they might come in handy. This project was the perfect use for them. The porch on the back of the garage was used as a pool lounge area (at least by the looks of the items left behind by the people who owned the house before us).

They left a lot of pool things and a stereo. The duck has been looking forward to using this area as a tiki bar - and this may still be possible but I wanted a place to grow greens when the weather gets cold again and start plants in the Spring. I'm late this year with gardening but I should be well set up for next year. I had to purchase windows that would open to provide some ventilation. I got two 48" by 48" sliding windows for this.

I went for the easy, pre-finished siding - it's primed and ready to go without a lot of fuss. The second window went on the other side. These were pretty easy to install. I decided to re-use an aluminum storm door that I had taken off the back of the house. I had saved it and again, this was the perfect use for it. The only problem was it was about a foot too tall for the space. I had to take it apart at the bottom and cut it down to size and then put it back together. I had to relocate one of the hinges as well. This process took a lot of time but I was pretty happy with final result.

The last part was the long wall that would have the salvaged windows. I had to trim the windows to a standard width to make the process easier. They were close but not the same. My portable table saw was just big enough for this process. I also set up a few jigs to bend sheet metal for flashing.

I set the matched frames on top of each other resting on a new "sill" I formed using a specially cut 2x4 (cut with my new band saw) and a piece of flashing. This was done for 8 sets of windows. I ran out of ones that were the same height and so I had to put two pairs in that were a little taller. It worked out fine, though. I even brought my mom outside today to watch for a little while because it was so nice.

I still have a little trim work to do, some caulking and painting, but it's mostly done!

R

In addition to the photos taken in High School (previous post) I took lots of photos in and around my hometown of South Fallsburg NY. I guess South Fallsburg was named because it was South of Fallsburg. Fallsburg was named because of the falls:

When I was really little my family lived in Monticello NY but I grew up in South Fallsburg. I remember feeling so confined and watched living in such a small town (population about 1,500). If I was to ride my bike in a way that was less than perfectly safe my parents would know about it BEFORE I got home. I really couldn't stand this aspect of small town life. Looking back now, though, I had an amazing amount of freedom as a kid. No cell phones, no GPS - I just had to be home before dark unless I told my parents I would be later. I rode my bike everywhere, tramped alone in the woods for hours - parents today would freak at the notion...

My parents never owned a home in the Catskills. They were always on the verge of moving somewhere. My father always wanted to move back to Florida. My mom also had roots in Florida and talked about moving (though not necessarily together). So we rented a series of homes in South Fallsburg. The first I remember was on Tunnel Hill Road - so named because there was a railroad tunnel under the road at one point. The railroad was abandoned by the time I was living there but I can remember walking through the tunnel. This was a scary adventure as there were no lights in the tunnel and it was long and wet and full of unknown dangers.

We lived in this house while I was in elementary school. Later, we moved to a house closer to town that sat in front of the Fallsburg bottling works on Rt 42 (Main St.). This was a plant that bottled beverages, though it was no longer in operation when we lived there (I believe) and became a distribution center for beer and soft drinks. The house we rented was the family home of the people who owned the bottling works - I guess they had moved on to better accomodations. Later, we also lived on Lake Street as well.

The Main St. house was just up the road from the center of town.

My father had a barber shop in South Fallsburg - Vincent's barber shop. My uncle had the beauty parlor - next door to the barber shop.

Many an hour I would visit my dad's place of business - it was almost like a second home. I would sweep the floors sometimes and later repair some of the clippers my father used. The shop was in the center of town and my dad always knew what was going on. I know it sounds like a cliche to remember how great it was to grow up in a functioning small town, and this wasn't how I felt at the time, but South Fallsburg really was a vibrant small town. There was a hardware store, lumber yard, drug stores, food stores, service stations, toy stores, taxi stands, shoe stores, a laundry - even a movie theater, not to mention the hotels. I'm probably leaving out a lot of the diversity of businesses that existed in the mid 1970's. I can say that most of this diversity is, unfortunately, long gone. I knew the children of the families that owned many of these stores. It really wasn't such a bad place to grow up after all.

Debbie wants me to mention that there is a chance that we attended a movie together at the Rivoli Theater some Summer night when we were kids - even though we didn't know each other. She spent Summers in Ulster Heights but would sometimes go to the movies in South Fallsburg.

Looking back I can see the divisions in the town, by class and race - where the "rich people" lived etc. It didn't matter to me as a kid (it doesn't "matter" to me now either) but I am more aware of them as an adult. In some ways South Fallsburg was pretty unusual - there was a large Jewish population to be sure but there was quite a diversity of people. A sizable African-American and Latino population as well as good old country rednecks. It's good to grow up with diversity - but I can't remember thinking a lot about it as a kid. I do remember some of the other schools that we used to play in sports meets were really "white bread" - quite different than Fallsburg.

There are so many things I remember (like the combination to our PO box after so many years) but I can't include them all - nor would most people care. It's all long gone - the houses we lived in, most of the businesses, probably most of the people too. If you grew up in or near South Fallsburg, though, I would love to hear from you about this post.

R

I have been digitizing old slides and negatives recently. It has taken a while to work out a method that was quick enough and gave acceptable results, but once I found it I was able to get a lot done. I have put up three groups of photos from my distant past at Fallsburg High. The first group of photos was taken at the school. The second was taken around the same time at parties etc. The third was taken at the Jamesway department store I worked in high school. As you will see, my skills have improved a lot over the years...