The Wheelbarrow

It is black with rust spots on a wooden frame. I’ve scrapped and painted it more than once, but it looks as if the rust is winning…rust can be relentless. An engineer once told me how much stronger rust is than concrete, I don’t recall what the factor was, but it got my attention as we were inspecting balconies on a high-rise building in Richmond. If you have metal railings attached to concrete it is wise to keep the metal painted and not to allow water to pocket where the railings go into the concrete – the rust will always win. I once had a high-rise property in Baltimore on which the concrete balconies were spalling and falling onto the street below – that’s what we call liability in the property management business.

I realize that rust on the bucket of a wheelbarrow is rather mundane, but it isn’t just any wheelbarrow, it’s our wheelbarrow with a history. A wheelbarrow with a history is something to pay attention to; if I had a museum I’d have a conservator preserve it and put it on display and have a nice narrative printed on plaques in front of it – I might even have some retrospective photos of places it’s been.

Wheelbarrows are not something you purchase every year – a good wheelbarrow ought to last for years, even decades. I’ve seen some old wheelbarrows that were likely used to haul dirt around Richmond for entrenchments during the Civil War.

When we first moved to Chesterfield County in 1989 we didn’t have a wheelbarrow. We had lived in a townhouse with virtually no front or back yard and whatever earth we needed to move could be moved in a child’s beach bucket. Of course Vickie planted flowers and plants in our little yard, she is always planting, but there was no need for a wheelbarrow.

Our first home in Chesterfield was begging to be beautified with flowers, perennials, and trees. It didn’t have to beg long before Vickie went into action. She went into action so quickly that we needed a wheelbarrow before we had a wheelbarrow. I had dirt to move that wouldn’t wait for me to go to the hardware store and purchase a wheelbarrow. What to do?

I went to our neighbors Bill and Gayle, two doors down, and borrowed a wheelbarrow for that first project. It was a wheelbarrow with a shallow bucket, but it did the job. You may recall from a previous post that we met Bill and Gayle shortly after we moved to Chesterfield through our “rescue” dog Mitzi – or “the Mitz” as she was also known. Vickie rescued her from the streets of Richmond and whenever we’d let her out of the house she’d run through our backyard, then through Doug’s backyard, and then to Bill and Gayle’s house – so we got to know Bill and Gayle because of our numerous trips to their home to retrieve Mitzi. It’s good to have neighbors who have wheelbarrows to lend.

Since I’ve had a lot of demand to write about my wheelbarrow I’ll continue this…