Story of a Wall: Barbie's Dream of a Beautiful Stone Wall Comes True.

Let's set the stage with a short video.

A fieldstone wall along the cove of her modest lakeside home  has long been a dream of Barbie Bell. But for a single, hard-working woman not made of money, the size and cost of the project have given her pause.

At a going rate starting at least $30 an hour, Barbie’s wall could cost a few thousand bucks. The building of a fieldstone wall is extremely labor intensive. The hours and costs add up fast.

Barbie’s dream wall can’t be mass-produced and rote-assembled. It is the opposite of that. It is a joint creation of nature and humankind that is unique and must fit seamlessly into the environment. The ultimate goal of a fieldstone wall is to bring out the natural beauty of its surroundings.

When a fieldstone wall looks like it has always been there, when you cannot imagine it not there, when its natural harmony reaches into your soul and puts you at peace, then and only then, will a fieldstone wall have fulfilled its destiny ---  which is to make people feel good every  time they see it.  

Isn’t that a lot to expect from a stone wall? No. Can a stone wall do this for people? Yes.

I’ve been building fieldstone walls for years. I’ve built them at my homes in Connecticut and in Worcester, Mass. and at my sister Ruby’s summer cottage. This is a wall in the back yard at my place in Worcester. Every time I look at my walls, which is just about every day, their natural beauty and harmony make me feel good.

I have never built a wall for money.   But a few weeks ago, Barbie, a friend  of the family from way back, e-mailed me. Actually, she’s become family, calling me “Uncle George.” She has seen my walls and asked me if I would build one for her at her lakeside home   She offered to pay me and asked for an estimate.  

Her timing was perfect.  With no wall projects, I had been thinking of building fieldstone walls as a part-time job.  I e-mailed her back, saying that I  would do it. I said I didn’t want to give her a scary estimate but would give her an hourly rate that would be the “bargain of a lifetime.”

We met the very next day at her place and I saw what had to be done.  The water was down in the lake and would be for about a month. It was not a lot of time but Barbie saw a window of opportunity.

For her, it was now or maybe never.  And Barbie was choosing “now.”

Another big plus was a good rock supply  right there in the drained lake. For years, Barbie had been collecting and piling rocks in the hope that someday they would be used for her dream wall.  

For my walls, I mostly scavage rocks, picking them up at vacant lots, in the woods, on the side of roads, at construction sites.  At construction sites, I ask permission and have never been turned down. I pride myself on never taking a working rock.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, it is said that I am a rock thief who is known to the police.

Notwithstanding the good rock supply, this was still a huge job and Barbie knew it. “I know it might take the entire month of May,” she said.  But she said that with the lake down, the time was right and she wanted to go for it, though she was concerned about the cost.

“What’s the legal minimum wage?” I asked, “eight bucks an hour?  That’s what I’ll charge you.  And if the hours add up to too many, I’ll reduce the amount.”  

Barbie smiled.  Well aware that I am no longer young -- I turned  73 on May 2 -- she said that she would have a guy come down to dig and haul  the rocks for me. “Great,” I said.

He never showed up.

I had  barely gotten started before Barbie  left for a vacation week at a New Orleans Jazz Festival. In the photo, you can see how far I had to go. Out there by myself in the mucky cove, I go on full throttle. I search out rocks with at least one flat, or fairly flat face to provide a smooth, even look.

With my iron bar, I pry big base rocks out of the muck  that are needed for the foundation.  I lug them by hand or pull them by cart.  I never fail to be surprised that I can move these big rocks, some of them small boulders.  

Many  I pick up and carry, hugging them to my chest. Big ones, I bend way down and push, shove, and roll slowly through the muck.  

This work is not for sissies. And if you have a problem getting filthy dirty, forget it.

On top of the base rocks, I gather rocks of all sizes, eyeing each for particular places.  After years of building walls, I can often size up a rock to fit into a specific space.  I love the thunk a rock makes when it slides perfectly into place. 

Most of the time, however, there is a lot of trial and error before getting a perfect fit and hearing that satisfying thunk.

By the way, that thunk is nice to hear because it tells me that an unseen, powerful, and uncompromising force that wants to weaken the wall can't.  It attacks the instant  one rock is placed on another. Its ultimate goal: reduce the wall to a pile of rocks. 

That force is gravity.  But to be fair, it has a good side that comes out when you show it who is boss. That is done when one thunk after another adds strength and stability and gives gravity no room to cause trouble. Cornered, it changes sides.

From fighting the wall, the turncoat throws its immense power into making it stronger. This is classic personality disorder with equally great and indiscriminate capacity for good OR evil. A wallbuilder must bring out gravity's good side. That's what I am working toward below as I set the very first base rocks of Barbie's wall.


  

After a couple of days, I was running out of the base rocks so important to a wall’s foundation. I was worried.  Would I have to use smaller rocks and compromise the foundation?

I needn’t have worried.  When I showed up the next morning, I found a gift from heaven: a big pile of base rocks along with rocks of all sizes.  I assumed it was the work of the fellow that Barbie had spoken of.

It wasn’t. It was the work of another friend of Barbie’s, Tim. “You did all that?” I asked him when he showed up.  He nodded. He was on vacation from work and had volunteered to help.“Talk about good timing,” I said. “ I had just about run out of the big ones. Welcome.”

Though I felt I had made good progress by myself, I had  done  only about 20% of the wall by the time Tim came on board.  With the two of us working together, work speeded up dramatically.  Tim, 40, is  strong  and works like a slave.  Here he moves a huge rock, laboriously, inch by inch, foot by foot.
 











The harder Tim worked, the harder I worked.  The more I pushed, the more he pushed. I was the old man bent on showing that he could still do it.  He was the young guy not about to be outworked by a fogie  approaching expiration date.  We were two  stallions rearing up on hind legs and flailing hooves at each other.

We competed in another way as well.  In wall-building, I’m a barely evolved hominid from the dawn of humankind in Africa three million years ago. I use a board with a line on it to measure the height of the wall.   More modern, Tim checks a wall’s height with string stretched between  wooden stakes.  We used both methods, ancient and modern.

Every time I was about to run out of rocks, Tim dumped a new pile of rocks at my feet. If I needed medium-sized rocks, he brought them. If I needed flat rocks, ditto. If I needed little flat and pointy-tipped rocks, the mortar of a fieldstone wall, he produced them.  These little ones are critical to a walls strength and stability. They drive old man gravity crazy.

With Barbie hoping to get her wall done in a month but not really expecting it, we set our sights on getting it done by the time she got back -- in other words, unthinkably, from start to finish,  in under one week.  

Amidst  the feverish work pace and macho displays, we talked about how pleasantly shocked Barbie was going to be when she came home and found her wall finished.  “She’s going to be so surprised,” Tim said. “She’s going to jump up and down she’s going to be so happy.”

“Don’t let on how much we are getting done,” I said.

“I’m not.  When I talk to her, I tell her it’s pretty slow going.”

“Good,” I said. “I can’t wait to see her reaction.”

With the two of us working like a couple of maniacs, the wall was soon in its final stages.  Tim and I eye-balled it from afar for height and visual appeal.  I made adjustments.  We eye-balled it again.  I made more adjustments.  We did that until we could find nothing to fix.

Tim and I looked at each other. “Looks good,” he said.

“Yes, I think so,” I said.

Barbie arrived home on the scheduled evening and wanted to go right out and look at the wall.  But Tim insisted that she had to wait until the next morning  so they could see the wall together. She was up at five and had to wait a couple of hours for Tim.  It felt like an eternity, she said, because she was dying to see the wall.

Tim finally escorted Barbie out to see her wall. She took one look at it and her jaw dropped. She was shocked, dazzled, amazed, and happy, happy, happy!  I came over and three of us celebrated and took pictures. Here Barbie and Tim pose with the finished wall behind them.
 

“I want to pay you,” Barbie said.  “Let’s go inside.”

Inside, we sat at her kitchen table and I gave her a sheet showing the hours I had worked.  It was 31 hours.  At $8 an hour, the bill was $245.

“You worked so hard and the wall is so beautiful, I want to pay you more than that,” she said. She wrote out a check for $350 and handed it to me. She apologized for it being so little.  “I know it’s worth a lot more than that,” she said. “Thank you so much. I’m so happy.”

“It was my pleasure.  If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

For Barbie and me, this was win-win. She got a beautiful fieldstone wall at a bargain price, but I also made out like a champ. For the first time, I got paid in real money for a wall.  In our society, this is an important way that we assign value.  

When Barbie gave me that check, as modest as it was, it felt good. And I know when I get checks for future walls that are closer to the going rate, though still a bargain, I’ll feel even better.

In addition, Barbie gave me a physical workout equivalent to 31 hours in a gym.  For that whole time, I was in constant motion, walking, bending, lifting. The arms, legs, lungs, and circulatory system of this old body got a great workout.

Instead of  being in a gym  tediously walking a treadmill and lifting weights  and constantly looking at my watch for an  end to the torture, I was outside building a wall and enjoying every minute of it. I didn't even know that I was exercising hour upon hour.  Time was timeless.

In a gym, I would have created nothing.  At Barbie’s, I created a beautiful wall that will be there for her and others to enjoy long after I am gone.

Thank you, Barbie.

The next day, I got an e-mail from Barbie:

Uncle George,

Wow.

That's all I can say.

I am so very thankful for the work you did! The wall, now known as GPW, [George Pollock Wall], looks stunning!!!!! ….  thank you, thank you, thank you!

It's gorgeous!!!!!!!

I know Tim helped you quite a bit- and that helped speed up the process, but  I am still amazed that it took you two under a week to build something so beautiful.

Thank you again so much!!!

The GPW sits patiently, waiting for the water to return so it can be seen by all boaters and show off its beauty.

xoxo,
Barbie

 Barbie and her hired rock guy

  at the GPW. See video below.

So long and keep moving.

Amazon E-Books by George Pollock

 "State Kid: Hero of Literacy" is fiction based on his  real-life experiences  growing up in foster homes; "Last Laughs," is the true story of how five foster kids (he and four younger siblings) found their way in life and each other. "Killers: Surprises in a Maximum Security Prison," is the story of his being locked up for 23 hours with killers in a maximum security prison;  "I, Cadaver" is about his postmortem adventures and mischief in the anatomy lab at UMass Medical School. “A Beautiful Story” demonstrates the art and process of creative writing as a 16-year-old boy goes all out to write a story that literally saves his life;  "A Long, Happy, Healthy Life," which is about how to live the title every day; and "Unlove Story," Writing anonymously as "Elvis," a husband, dumped after 38 years of marriage, lets it all out on love, marriage, life, everything. A guy doing this? It's unheard of.

   For the Nook:

A Beautiful Story
A Long, Happy, Healthy Life
I, Cadaver
Killers
State Kid
Unlove Story

Rocks in His Head 2: An All-natural Gift of Sweat, Rustic Beauty, and Practicality to Last Several Lifetimes.

Most people celebrate Labor Day by taking a break from labor. Me? Having rocks for brains, I kick up the labor several notches.

I built a mini Wall of China. In a brutal Labor Day week of almost non-stop heavy work, I built a 60-foot long fieldstone wall around my daughter Misha's deck behind her new Connecticut home.

The wall is similar to the one I built in my front yard, shown here, except longer and higher. In my opinion, there is nothing like a fieldstone wall to both define a home's outside and make it more beautiful and welcoming.

I built Misha's wall as a surprise while she was in Lake Tahoe designing and putting together the interior of a client's mountain home. I knew she wanted a stone wall because she had been getting quotes on a stone wall, patio, and steps. The quotes were discouragingly high, ranging from $20,000 on up.

She wanted a long -- very long -- wall. But, because of the cost, she had decided to put it off. By the time she left for California, all thoughts of a stone wall had been banished from her head, in no small measure thanks to me.

But when she came home, while she was in the kitchen talking about her trip, she happened to look out the window. "Oh my God!" she shreiked. "A wall!"

You have never seen a young woman more surprised -- or more delighted. She rushed outside to inspect her new wall. As she did so, she kept saying, "I don't believe it. I don't believe it." Then, giggling like a preteen girl, she ran to me and hugged me.

"Do you like your new stone wall?" I asked.

"Are you kidding? I love it."

I felt a wave of relief. Because Misha is an interior designer and has a trained eye for harmonious use of space, any space, inside or out, I had taken a certain amount of risk. As a talented designer and a perfectionist on top of that, she would not be able hide her displeasure with a stone wall that was in the least discordant.

Her eye goes immediately to any design failure, however tiny, and displeasure is written all over her face. She can't fake liking something that hits her wrong, though, because she is sweet and caring, she does try.

I could tell she wasn't faking it. There was nothing in her face but delight with my surprise gift. Her pleasure was later confirmed at a family gathering in which she told the whole story of her new wall. I hadn't been talked about so much since when I used to chase women.

It was nice to be a player again.

I did point out certain weak points in the wall, such as not enough flat rocks on top and an errant wiggle, and said I would fix them first chance. For a perfectionist not to see shortcomings that were obvious to me, well, who could ask for more than that?

The surprise was total. Her joy was bounteous. My diabolical scheme had worked perfectly. All the brutal, back-breaking work had been worth it. I almost didn't make it, physically and timewise, and was working bone-tired in the dark on the night of her arrival.

Let me now give you an idea of how physically hard it was for me to build such a long wall in such a short time. In the first place, I didn't have the stones delivered from a masonary supply company. I had to find them in the wild, literally.

First, I harvested all the suitable rocks I could find in the immediate vicinity of the house. Many were buried, with perhaps an edge showing. They had to be dug up with a shovel or pick. With the bigger buried rocks, I had to use my long iron bar. Thanks to the magic of leverage, with this heavy piece of iron I can get amazingly large rock out of the ground.

Once I found rocks and dug them up, I had to get them to the work site. Normal people with brains larger than mine use a wheelbarrow. Like our prehistoric ancesters, I pick up as many as I can by hand and carry them to the location of the future wall.

Often, it is one large rock and it is all I can do to carry it. Large rocks are needed for the base of the wall to give it a strong foundation. After gathering the easy pickings, I climbed like a mountain goat up a steep hillside, slipping and sliding all the way, to get suitable rocks. Several times while lugging large base rocks down the hillside, I nearly lost my footing.

Did you ever pick up a good-sized fieldstone? Try it some time. It's a solid dead weight that leaves mere human flesh and bone decidely overmatched. Did you ever try to pick up and muscle a few thousand heavy rocks in the course of a few days?

If your brain is filled with geologic deposits as mine is and you have done so, then you know that fieldstones are heavy. Carrying even a few medium-sized fieldstones takes a lot of energy and strength. Lugging large fieldstones through the woods, hour after hour and day after day, is extreme grunt work at its most primordial.

Not any rock will do. It must have wall potential. That means it must have at least one smooth face and have a workable shape. The ideal rock is flat and square. Unfortunately, in real-world rock hunting, this beauty, this object of a rock hounds's fantasy, is mostly a romantic figment.

Rocks in the wild come in all shapes except flat and square. On the rare occasion that I do unearth such a gem, my rock hound's heart pounds with excitement. I see it hiding ugly, though hard-working, rocks. I see it covering up holes and mistakes and providing a finishing veneer to the top of the wall.

To me, this part of building a wall is an exciting treasure hunt. Finding the perfect flat and square rock is always possible. You never know when that little edge poking out of the ground will turn out to be a wall-builder's dream come true. But even finding rocks that are far from perfect but that you know will work is a thrill.


It's amazing how many rocks I needed to build Misha's wall, by far the longest and most ambitious I have ever built. After using up all the rocks from the hillside and nearby woods, I ran out of building material. Basically, I told Misha's husband Ed, no rocks, the walls ends.

Now Ed is one can-do guy and he very much wanted a wall for his wife. Large new homes are under construction nearby, and Ed immediately suggested that we ask the builder -- the same one who built Ed and Misha's house -- if we could take rocks from the site.

We went up and chased down the builder who was quite happy to accommodate a customer with rocks that he had no need for and that were only going to be buried anyway.

Using Misha's SUV, I made trip after trip to the building site, searching, digging, picking, bending, lifting, hauling. I sweated buckets. My dirt-caked clothes stuck to me. I paused only for water and to watch Andre Agassi wind up his brilliant career with a hard-fought and emotional loss to B. Becker (not the one you're thinking of) in the U.S. Open.

Then there is the minor detail of actually building the wall. If I had all flat and square royalty, all I would have to do is place them on each other. But what I had was mostly peasant-class rocks who had to be made to perform like royalty. They had to be able to meet the approval of Misha's unerring eye for design and visual harmony.

The wall had to look good but it also had to be strong so it won't fall and make me the laughing stock of the whole family. I had to create a pleasing and unified facade by putting each rock's best face forward. The many rocks had to be forced to create a unified whole.

A wall is not rocks piled on each other. It is part puzzle, part physics, part aethestics, part brute strength. It is also, I would argue, cosmically (not comically, please) significant, a transformation of choas into order. By application of prehistoric work methods and dimwittedness, in my case at least, rocks existing randomly in nature come magically together in a wall that serves humanity.
And who is to say that a wall does not also serve individual rocks by rescuing them from dark, hidden, lonely, and pointless existences. Take a beautiful square and flat rock, for example, buried in dirt, unseen and unappreciated except by worms who love to nest under it.
But when I dig it up, everything changes. It becomes the object of a rock hound's love. It is brought up from the darkness into a community of all kinds of different-shaped brethren. It is given a place of honor at the top of the wall where it reigns as royalty over the rough, flawed, hard-working commoners arranged below.
Robert Frost wrote that a good wall makes good neighbors. I say that a good wall makes good rocks and good people better because it puts them both to work creating something of innate and lasting value. A stone wall? Yes, a stone wall, at least one built and given with love as Misha's was.
But it must be a good wall and this means it must be strong. The trick is to make the extraordinary weight of each stone contribute to the strength of the wall overall. A good wall has a complicated and necessary interlocking and its strength comes primarily from its own weight.

Each rock must be placed to bear weight without movement. Each placement is an engineering decision that must anticipate the next rock and the next and the next. This takes a lot of time, something that many people do not appreciate. Misha's husband, Ed, is one.

He came home from work one day and came out to check on my progress. I had been working flatout like a slave. I was soaked with sweat. I was filthy. I was tired. I thought I was making good progress. "It looks the same, " he said. "Did you take a break?"

Now I like Ed and we get along terrifically, but sometimes he says exactly the wrong thing and this was one of those times. But instead of telling him so as I usually do, I just gave him a stern look, and said, "Ed ... Ed ..."

He got the point.

Later, kidding, I told him, "You know, Ed, there are laws against exploiting a person over 65. If I reported you to the authorities, they would come here and take you away just like that. You'd go to jail for working an old man like this."

It didn't stop him from pushing me to add about 20 feet to what I had planned. He said, "The trouble is you sit at the table and look out and the wall ends. It looks funny. It would really look a lot better if when you looked out you saw all wall."

I agreed with him, reluctantly. Because I had to build 20 more feet of wall, I ended up pushing myself even more. Nearly delerious, I put the final touches on the wall in the dark of night.

As I was leaving after a week of brute physical labor, Misha let me know that she would love it if I would extend the wall quite a bit more: the entire length of the house. She asked when I would be coming back. She said it would be nice if the wall were completed before the holidays.

I made believe I was being put upon, but I was secretly pleased. She loved the wall. She loved it so much that she wanted more. After complaining that I had not seen a cent of the 75 cents per hour I charge her for such work, I told her I would be happy toextend the wall. She said the check was in the mail.

Misha and Ed stopped by our place this weekend. They talked about how wonderful it was to have breakfast in the morning while looking out at the wall. But it does need to be longer, they said.

"When are you going to finish it?" Ed asked.

I gave him THE LOOK. "Ed .... Ed..."

But inside I was proud and happy. I had given a gift to be enjoyed for a lifetime, perhaps several lifetimes. It is appreciated. It did not cost a cent, only time and hard work. I can't remember having a more enjoyable week.

Plus, you should see my arms and shoulders: rippling muscles, man. Okay, maybe not "rippling," but certainly toned up after an extreme weeklong workout.

When I got back home, I went swimming at my sister's lakefront place. She took one look at me in my bathing suit and said, "You're so thin!"

I smiled. "Not thin," I said. "Last week in Connecticut, I just exchanged a little fat for muscle." Then I told her the story of Misha's wall.

Instantly, she said, "I need a wall."

I smiled and dove in and had a wonderful end-of-summer swim.

So long and keep moving.

 E-Books by George Pollock

"State Kid: Hero of Literacy" is fiction based on his  real-life experiences  growing up in foster homes; "Last Laughs," is the true story of how five foster kids (he and four younger siblings) found their way in life and each other. "Killers: Surprises in a Maximum Security Prison," is the story of the author being locked up for 23 hours with killers in a maximum security prison;  "I, Cadaver" is about the author's postmortem adventures and mischief in the anatomy lab at UMass Medical School. “A Beautiful Story” demonstrates the art and process of creative writing as a 16-year-old boy goes all out to write a story good enough to get him into an exclusive college -- on full scholarship; and "A Long, Happy, Healthy Life," which is about how to live the title every single day.