Eagle Projects are sure hard

Hey everyone, today was my brother's eagle project. While it is probably harder on my brother, it was still really hard on me.

Here is some background. At the high school there is a practice field across the street from high school, and behind the maintenance building, the one that used to be part of a pre-school, there is a small playground right next to the practice field. His project was taking apart the play structure, taking off the fence, and getting rid of the concrete. Now you may be wondering, "why get rid of a play structure?" Well the thing was falling apart, it was tetnis waiting to happen, and the first time some one was on it in a long time was when I got on it to take measurements. It would add lots of room for the football team and any other teams that use the field.

So we get there, set up, and all is going according to plan. The few of us that were there at the beginning start taking apart the fence. We take off the chain link part, roll it up, and move the cross beams. So now all we need to do is wait for the concrete guy and his back hoe to take out the posts and concrete walkway. Well there was a bit of an issue with that.

Guess what, the guy that is supposed to handle the concrete, doesn't come!!!! So what does that mean? We volunteers have to take care of all the concrete. Ahhhhhhhhh, so much unnecessary work. First we have to dig out the fence posts, and then the contractor guys that my brother had that would hull away everything and do heavy machinery, tied the posts to his truck and yank the posts out. It looked cool, but it was unnecessary since the back hoe guy could have done it really easily. And if the contractor that we had wasn't there, the project couldn't have happened.

So now we have probably 2 tons of concrete walkway that we need to get rid of. Maybe even more than 2 tons. Here's how we handled it. We broke apart the slabs with sledge hammers and moved them to a place where some one can pick it up and have it out of the way. We did that for.........................................6 hours, or more, who's counting? Break it up into smaller pieces, load them up into wheel barrows, move it across the field to the drop site, and repeat. We ruined a wheel barrow doing that, and damaged others, all of which shouldn't have happened.

You won't believe this, the concrete guy had the gull to call and yell at my brother saying "what's you break it up for? I can't use it now." In not so may words, my brothers response was basically "IF YOU WANTED IT, YOU SHOULD HAVE SHOWED UP!! WE CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU SO WE DID WHAT HAD TO BE DONE WITH WHAT WE HAD!!" This guy really screwed up, and gave himself such bad PR. Here was his reason for not being there when we needed him, "he was busy." WHAT???!!! You scheduled to be here, why on Earth would you schedule something on today? I don't think he was doing it for free, but for a reduced cost. And helping boy scouts with an eagle project is such an image booster, not to mention some advertisement. Like for my project we used "Ace Hardware" yard waist bags and had "Dunkin Doughnuts." What you're saying is "we care about the community" and that is really good for business. None of the 30 people that were there, nor all the hundreds of people they know, are ever going to give him business ever again. For a local business guy that is very bad for him. The contractor we had really helped out.

Now we get all the concrete hulled away from the work site, and now is time to get the top soil in the place where the poles and walkway used to be. We probably could have been done by noon or so, but because of the concrete issue, we went all the way until 4:30. Hulling the dirt wasn't nearly as bad as concrete. We fill up barrows with dirt, dump them where needed, spread it out along the area we need, and repeat. Raking the dirt to even it out reminded me a lot of raking sand traps at the country club I caddie at. It was second nature to me. In the time it took people to spread one mound I was able to get 3 done. Just wish my arms weren't aching after all the concrete.

The concrete shouldn't have happened. It just shouldn't have. Luckily we are boy scouts and we are resourceful. Well now the concrete is sitting in 3 large piles and one small pile near an opening in the fence out of the way waiting for someone to take care of it when we find some one to take care of it. Well this has been pokematic signing off and bu bye.