“Yo, bro! Like, you totally rock even if you won’t puff a bong with me and my homies!”
Ziggy Robins was in fine vocal form as he scampered about the yard carrying tools, raking the gravel pad, and admiring the Mule doing its job at my bidding.
Yes, he was actually doing all those things at once. The manic energy of the self-proclaimed hippie was amusing as a sideshow to this day’s adventures.
A few weeks earlier, as I was finishing up an easy shed delivery in the countryside of beautiful northwest Montana, my phone rang. When I answered, a familiar voice brought memories flooding back.
“Hey Jason, like, I messed up, and like, I need you to, like, come and move my shed a bit.”
As the familiar voice of Ziggy Robins droned in my ear, I couldn’t help but stifle a chuckle. I wondered which problem needed to be addressed in moving the shed I had delivered for him six months earlier.
Was it the neighbor’s tree he had mutilated with his brand-new saw, or was it the property boundary he ignored in placing the shed over the line?
Or was it the city finally catching up with him and enforcing the 6-foot setback from property line requirement?
Or was it perhaps that the neighborhood was tired of the bong parties he was holding in the shed?
“Sure thing, Mr. Robins,” I replied, squelching my amusement. “What do you need done?”
“Well, the city is, like, mad at me for putting the shed, like, too close to the line,” he sheepishly admitted. “They’ll let me be closer than, like, the standard 6 feet, but I can’t actually, like, be over the line like it is now.”
“Not a problem,” I replied. “Do you have it ready to move now, or how soon do you want me to move it?”
“Oh, I’m not ready yet. I gotta cut a few more trees down and get another gravel pad put in first,” he said.
I was afraid he could see my arching eyebrows over the phone. From my recollection, there weren’t any more trees to cut down that could be legally considered his.
After my last visit to the little house of hippies six months before, there wasn’t a stalk of grass left on Ziggy’s side of the property line, let alone any trees.
“Ok,” I replied as I tamped down my curiosity. “Send me a text once you have a date in mind, and I’ll put it in my schedule.”
A few days later my phone dinged, and it was a text from good ol’ Ziggy.
“Next week will work for me. Just let me know which day,” the text read.
Accordingly, I called Mr. Robins the following week a few days in advance of my schedule.
“Hey, I will be in your area this coming Thursday and would like to move your shed early in the afternoon.” I paused and asked, “Will that work?”
“Oh, bro, like, no it won’t. I got delayed and won’t be done till Friday. Can you, like, do Friday?”
I’m not sure why I was surprised, but it seems I still take people at their word. Even unreliable guys like Ziggy.
“I’ll tell you what,” I replied. “I can’t do Friday, but when you are completely done, you call me and let me know. I’ll get you worked in within a few days.”
“But can’t you just schedule me for next week?” Ziggy whined. “I’ll be done for sure by then.”
Honestly, I typically would have said yes and scheduled it, but after my previous dealings with this particularly unreliable hippie, I wasn’t taking that chance again.
“No, I’d rather wait till I know you are completely done before I schedule it. I’ll get to you right away once you have it all ready,” I promised. “Remember that the shed must be empty and the gravel pad installed before I get there.”
“No problem,” Ziggy replied. “I’ll get it done this weekend and get back to you Monday.”
Well, Monday came and went, followed by the rest of the week. My midsummer schedule is hectic enough that I forgot all about my bong-smoking customer till nearly three weeks later.
“Yo bro, like, I’m done and ready for you, like, this week.” The tinny phone speaker filled my ear once more with Mr. Robins’ excited voice. “When can you get it done?”
“Well, let me see my schedule here,” I replied as I scrolled through my calendar. “How about the day after tomorrow?”
“Cool man, like, that would be awesome!” Ziggy shouted in reply.
“Just a reminder, the shed has to be empty,” I interjected before he could hang up.
“Oh, sure! No problem, bro!” was his cheerful retort.
Well, I thought, maybe this time we’ll have an easier spot. Honestly, I was pretty sure it would be hard to get anything more difficult than the last time I had been at his place.
Accordingly, approximately 48 hours after our last conversation, the little street once more rumbled with the sounds of the big diesel, and hissing air brakes reverberated along the townhouse fronts of the quiet neighborhood.
Swinging down from the cab of my truck, I walked along the sidewalk to the fateful spot where a brand-new chainsaw had faced total ruin six months earlier.
As I rounded the house, my steps faltered. Gone was the giant oak and every other living tree or shrub that I had fought with on my last visit.
The front portion of the row of trees between Ziggy Robins’ house and the poor absentee neighbor was completely gone.
Farther back along the property line, I could see the line of trees, but the front 50 feet were simply gone. The gap was not unlike several missing teeth in a redneck’s grin.
Most notable was the enormous space left by the stately oak whose upraised arms had been haplessly butchered on my last visit.
Uneasily, I looked around. No wrathful neighbor was visible, and I had no plans to hunt for him.
“Whas-su-up-p-p, du-u-ude?” the slurred, pot-laden voice of Lem Parker broke into my reverie. “Think you can, like, move it, bro?”
Turning, I had to grin again at the familiar site of a well-chewed blunt dangling from the easygoing hippie’s mouth.
“Well, I certainly will try,” I promised. “Is Ziggy around?”
“Nah, he had to, like, go to the hardware store and buy, like, a rake and a shovel. He still has to smooth out the truckload of gravel they brought, like, this morning.”
My wandering eyes had just moments earlier found the pile of gravel and suspicion was already growing in my mind when Lem confirmed it. It was so predictable it made me laugh. After all, what else is a fellow going to do at this point? Clearly, punctuality and honesty weren’t part of Ziggy’s character.
Turning to look at Lem, I detected a faint grin sneaking around the smoldering joint barely hanging in there.
“Like, did Ziggy say he was ready today?” Lem queried.
“Yes, he did,” I replied, stifling my own grin. “When do you suppose he’ll be back?”
My question was drowned out by the rattling of Ziggy’s truck as it rounded the corner and drifted into the driveway. The vehicle was still rattling and gurgling its dying breaths as the driver’s door opened and the wiry figure of Mr. Robins bounded out.
“Mr. Kauffman! You’re, like, here early, aren’t you? Ziggy shouted. “No worries, I’ll have this ready in five minutes.”
Now I had seen this particular specimen of humanity in action before, so I grinned and waved him at the pile of gravel.
“Have at it, man. I’ll just go unload my Mule and wait for you,” I said over my shoulder as I headed for the rig.
Although I had seen Ziggy’s manic energy before, I was still surprised at the amount of work he had done in the five minutes it took to get my Mule unloaded and brought around to the side of the house. Half the gravel was already smoothed out, and the rest was flying all about in a nearly continuous spray from the blur of his sparkling shovel.
Lem clearly was having none of this craziness as he slouched over to the porch and found a bucket to sit on.
While I waited on the gravel-leveling blur to finish up, I walked over to the shed and reached for the door handle.
“Don’t open that door!” Ziggy shouted at the last moment.
As my hand grasped the handle and turned it, Mr. Robins’ shouted warning hit my ears, but it was too late. As the little latch passed by the sill catch, the door burst open and hit me in the chest with surprising force. Staggering backward, I tried futilely to stem the tide of tools and boxes that rolled out in a catastrophic jumble.
“Oh man, like, you weren’t supposed to open that door!” Ziggy shouted in dismay. “It, like, took me hours to get all that stuff packed in there.”
Whirling around, I glared at him. “Did you forget the part where I said the shed has to be empty?” I asked coolly. “I specifically said that several times.”
“Yeah, I heard you, but I didn’t think you meant it. This is all just lightweight stuff,” he finished lamely.
Someday, I’m afraid I will actually lose my eyeballs in the back of my head from rolling them at crazy stuff like this. Today clearly wasn’t the day, because after only a moment, my eyes rolled obediently back into place, and I could still see the mess in front of me.
“Well, I meant it,” I retorted. “Tell you what; I’m going to go to my truck and make a few phone calls. I have a bit of extra time, and I’ll wait for you to get it empty and then come get me. I’ll move it.”
I didn’t wait around to see how he planned to accomplish this. I just wanted to get away before I said something I’d regret. The sickly-sweet essence of marijuana was starting to get to me, and I definitely needed a breather.
Sitting in my truck and making the phone calls settled my temper a bit, and once I had completed them, I sat back and closed my eyes. It had been a long day, and this was my last stop. It sure would be good to be home early one of these days.
Maybe the secondhand cannabis put me to sleep because it seemed like a surprisingly short time before a tap on my door window shook me from my reverie and brought me to the present again.
“We’re done.” Lem Parker’s voice wafted up to me in a cloud of smoke. “Can you move it now?”
Swinging down from the cab of my truck, I followed Lem around the house to the now mostly empty shed. The pile of contents in front of the door staggered even me.
Peering past the haphazard heap, I saw the inside still had a dozen or more boxes, and the lofts were still loaded, but I decided I didn’t care. I wasn’t coming back here again.
It took only about 15 minutes to maneuver the shed into its new resting place, and as before, Lem and Ziggy were rather awestruck at the little “forklift’s” capabilities.
Few things will soothe a man’s temper faster than unbridled admiration and compliments, so by the time I had set the shed into place once more, my frustration had simmered down to nothing.
As I finished writing the bill for my time, my curiosity got the best of me.
“So, the city made you move it, huh? I asked. “What did your neighbor say about it, and how did you get all his trees cut down?
“Hey bro, like, it was so easy,” Ziggy said. “The city inspector told me I had to move it, like, right away. Once the neighbor saw, like, how bad it looked with, like, a bunch of limbs missing, he actually, like, paid me to cut the rest of the trees down.
“I, like, made money the whole time. Now he wants me to, like, landscape his whole property,” Ziggy finished.
Shaking my head in bewilderment, I headed for my truck with Ziggy’s cash in hand. Clearly, this neighborhood was a strange one. I guess if they wanted to pay me to take part in their shenanigans, I’d keep showing up.
After all, the money was good even if the smell wasn’t.