The Rock-Preamble

Many years ago, I'm not sure how many, my uncle (the one who has the country place that no one knows about) set about the daunting task of building a major earth dam across a huge ravine that had been carved out over many decades of watershed.  By design, this dam created a pretty little pond that is spring fed and full of blue gills who think they are piranha.  In the process of creating this little Walden, a very large flat limestone rock was unearthed.  By large, I mean 12' square, roughly, by about 12" thick, more or less.  As the legend goes, a very large dozer puffed mightily as it pushed this leviathan up from the depths of the hole.  The operator shoved it up next to an old tree (I really should know what kind of tree, but I cant recall), and there it sat for several years.  The pond filled quickly, we sowed some grass, and today it looks as if it was always there.

But the rock taunted me, laying there year after year, looking quite out of place and useless.  Many beers were drunk while imagining a use for this rock.  It is not particularly striking in any way except in its size.  Certainly not the type of rock one would buy to add to the landscape of his home.  It really only has one quality: persistence in its vocation (that of being a big rock).    But I could not be in its vicinity without it catching the corner of my eye, laying there all smug.  It did not belong there.  It knew it. We all knew it.  And year after year it dared us to do something about it.

The problem one has with monoliths is Newtonian in nature.  The whole mass at rest thing is problematic proportionate to the mass.  This is compounded by economic principles that dictate that the relative value of a relocated rock times the expenditures of moving it equals folly.  Consequently, using a crane or enormous track-hoe was out of the question.  Still, it beckoned.  There is something very basic in the nature of man that compels us to dash ourselves against rocks.  History has no shortage of examples.  And so over many years of careful inebriation we finally came to the only possible conclusion:  the rock must become a picnic table.  And to be certain we properly honored our ancestors, it must become a picnic table 30 feet to the right.


We decided to get Egyptian on its ass.

To be continued...