Big things

I didn't get a particularly early start from Saskatoon today so by noon I was only at Davidson. The citizens of Davidson have bought into the "big thing" concept with a coffee pot and cup. Vegreville has the big egg and its kind of cute but come on - a big coffee pot? Some of you may have seen the episode of Corner Gas where the residents of Dog River decided they needed their own big thing to promote tourism. After a lengthy townhall meeting they came up with the world's biggest hoe. Which inevitably led to all sorts of innuendos about Dog River's big dirty hoe. I couldn't help thinking about that as I looked (briefly) at Davidson's big coffee pot which is next to what is painfully obviously a plastic water tank turned upside down. If you look closely you can even see the flat spot for the valves on the bottom of the tank (which is now the top of the coffee cup). Oh well.

I was more attracted to the dump wagon which is located under a shelter behind the coffee pot. It brought back memories of the one that sat on the hill behind Grandpa's barn. I whiled away many hours between the age of six and probably ten playing with that dump wagon. Grandpa's hadn't been restored the way the one in Davidson has but the dump mechanism still worked. I would pump away on the lever until the chains were wound up tight and then trip the floor release to let the doors fly open. The one in Davidson has a lever release for the dump but I'm sure Grandpa's had a foot pedal to release the doors. Its hard to imagine building any amount of road with such small equipment and the wagon would have had to be loaded entirely by hand.

Tonight I'm once again listening to the music of a hundred idling diesels in the parking lot at the Husky on the east side of Regina. They must all have broken starters. It was 31 or 32 degrees in Regina today but its extremely pleasant now so they can't be idling them to run air conditioners. I think its just trucker habit.