The Second Pour

The second pour happened on the day the sky turned red. That ominous hue was the same color as the gulf of wildfire eating the horizon, consuming thousands of acres of land to the North and West. On this historic day, people reported an eerie feeling of eternal night, a post apocalyptic sense of having been abandoned by the sun itself.

That historically strange day was also a flurry of activity at the house as the cement truck came rumbling up to park once again in front of the house for our second pouring of the walls and parts of the floor in the basement. Workers were literally running around back and forth and from one side of the house to the other in preparation to start pumping a fountain of viscous cement.

One interesting thing I noticed before the actual pour was that workers were banging on the pipes quite forcefully. I asked them why and was told that sections of the pipe were clogged and they needed to break up and loosen those areas inside the pipe where dried concrete would hinder the flow of fresh cement. I enjoyed watching the kinetic action on this day and the sense of progress, of getting closer by increments, to the completion of this exciting, new space was heartening.