Chapter 2

Tori and I had been putting varying amounts of cash in our checking accounts each week so we stopped by and got printouts. I asked her how come she had more than I did and she said that the Queen dirt dauber always had more honey than the Drone dirt dauber. I told her I said Money, not Honey, but she said it was the same thing. I told her that was fine but don't forget her checkbook tomorrow. She asked if we could each carry nine thousand and be legally under the 10K law. I didn't know but we could try it but she still needed to bring her checkbook because I didn't think 45 thousand would get it done. We called Clay and told him we were on the way.

Clay had us follow him to the Bobcat dealer to look at an answer to our fuel problem. The girls were like kids in a candy store, they had the salesmen, and all the parts guys pushing each other out of the way to wait on them. Julie was looking at a dozer attachment and didn't want to go with us to look at the fuel trailer. It held 500 gallons, had the hose, nozzle, pump, battery, and a solar charger, it was new, mounted on a trailer with a 7,000 pound torsion arm axle, and the cost was $6,000 so we bought it. Julie came out and told us that the blade could be modified to work, but we would need a pretty big track Bobcat to handle it, and there were none narrow enough. She did have a brochure on it and was thinking hard about it. Clay called his Dad and told him he was going to lunch with us. With our new fuel trailer in tow, we followed him to a restaurant.

The subject got around to the motor grader and he told us that what he found out was, there are not many around. He had found two, one was a Volvo and it was beyond worn out from end to end. The other he had not seen but had talked to them. It belonged to a county about 150 miles down Interstate 10. He said that it would not do the job they needed done and a couple of new county commissioners would probably not be re-elected because they bought it to save the county money. He told us the county had 4 or 5 times more miles of dirt road than pavement and with their big Caterpillar 140's they could work between 5 and 10 miles a day. The Noram 65 could only do 2 miles on a real good day. He said their Cat's were one of the bigger graders and had over two hundred horsepower. They used them like bulldozers and pushed them to the max. He said the guy he talked to told him that it was a lucky road in their county that got graded more than once in five years. He said their big graders had 16 foot wide blades and the Noram had a ten footer. It was about 21 feet long, had 110 horsepower, and weighed about one fourth of what the big ones weighed. He said since we had a dozer that could be used to bust through anything it couldn't handle, it might be a good choice for us. The county had bought it used from somewhere up in the Texas panhandle. The best thing was, it had extremely low hours and they had been trying to sell it for a long time, it was setting in their maintenance yard and ready to go, only $58,000 and it could be ours. Tori asked if he thought it would work the roads in T-Town and he told her that it would but it would not work as many miles in a day as a big one would. We went back to the rental yard for him to call them.

On the way to the yard the question of did it have a trailer came up, that was the first thing we asked when we reached the rental yard. Clay said he would call them, we spent a half hour on the phone and then waited another half hour for the guy to see if he could get it hauled to Alamogordo. When he called back he said that they wanted another thousand to deliver it to A-Town. It would be on their truck leaving first thing in the morning. They would have a notarized bill of sale from the county and we would need to go to the bank and get a certified check to give to their driver. I told the girls we had spent all we could afford and handed Clay a thousand. The girls chattered all the way home with their, I wonder if it will do this or that. Hell I was happy to have the fuel trailer because I was usually the one who had to load and fill the cans.

Charley and Julie left after breakfast to go get the truck and dozer trailer, we planned to use it to haul the grader. Tori, Trina and I went to the bank to deposit Glen's check and move some money around to get the certified check for the grader. Brie was busy finding the truck stop with the lowest price to fill the diesel tank, and anything she could find on line about operating a motor grader. The guy next to us has a dirt and gravel parking lot and was going to let us unload and practice on his lot. He figured if we could make it smooth we wouldn't have any problem with fixing roads and driveways, he called somebody to get a load of gravel dumped and truck spread. We were going to smooth the whole thing. I had about given up on the grader getting here when he finally showed up. He had to stop and do something or other to his air brakes. Julie got there in time to help unload it and the truck driver told her he had ran it for several weeks while they had it in use and it was just too light for them. He did offer to teach her how to operate it on the parking lot. I listened to them talk for a while and decided that it was not going to be a fast job to learn. I asked him if he would give her two hours of lessons for two hundred and he jumped on it. They did a first class job on the neighbor's lot and he was real happy and told us we could use his lot any time we needed to.

Charley went with me so we could learn how to fill the fuel trailer. After some discussion with the guy at the truck stop, he let us fill it at the same pumps the 18 wheelers used. We saved a little and it still cost twelve hundred. I needed to mention that to the girls so they would have plenty of money with them if they needed to fill it. Julie spent the evening watching U-Tube videos on methods and tricks for motor graders. Maybe I had moved up to Bobcat operator. Tomorrow it's back up the mountain.

We were almost to T-Town when we caught up with a caravan of heavy, heavy, duty bulldozers, trucks, trailers, and excavators. They had a pickup leading and one following with wide load signs and all kinds of blinking lights. We followed them into T-Town and they stopped right in the road to get directions to Glen's place, Tori caught them and had them follow her, and we followed them on to Glen's. Tori stopped in the large flat area on the new road where our equipment was parked and Trina and Charley got out and two guys got in and she drove them into the work area to show them where to park while tearing up the least. I parked our truck and grader and when Tori came back leading the other two pickups we all went to eat. The lady at the sandwich shop had placed an old kitchen sink on a stand and hooked it to a garden hose in the parking lot for workers to wash their hands. The little bathroom in the place was way too small for a bunch of people hitting the place at the same time.

We learned that their fuel truck and the generator truck would be here in an hour or so. The Brice's had rented the whole little 8 room motel for the next 3 weeks. They were planning to run 24/7 until they finished. Four of the wives had contracted to cook for two 12 hour shifts and they had stopped in A-Town to buy groceries. They had a big canopy to set up for their kitchen and dining area. They said they ate a lot of beans, chili, and stew that came in gallon cans on these kind of jobs but for the money they were making they could put up with it. They left and we hung around the sandwich shop a while longer and then decided to go see if Lisa had anything for us.

She had three more lots for us to sign the paperwork and pay for, and she had sold the two lots with the ramp driveways, more paperwork to sign. On the 3 we had just paid her for, she said if we could get this one done she was sure she could sell it. She had some people interested in it but they did not want to do any work on it. We told her if Brice came in to tell him where we were working and went to look at it.

The lot was not any worse than some we had done, it had a natural driveway that was clear of trees but full of brush. We brought in the equipment and worked until 5 o'clock. The little excavator was pulling brush like it was designed to do it, I wonder why the hell we had not been using it before. Tori and Trina helped me load the brush trailer, we unhooked it and left it to go eat. After we ate we went back to Glen's place to get our other pickup and drove on in to see how they were doing. They had the kitchen set up, the dozers and excavators were hard at it and two guys were setting up the light stands and running power cables. They didn't look like they needed our help so we went to the bunkhouse and made up the beds with clean linen. We didn't have enough storage for the extra towels and linens so we stacked them on the unused bunk. Julie was watching grader videos she had downloaded to her laptop and Charley was talking to two girls that had rode up on a four wheeler. Tori, Trina, and I were setting at an old wooden park table shooting the shit when Jackie and her husband drove up.

They said they had sold our lumber to some guys building a screwed up looking cabin out of a 40 foot shipping container. I asked her how the woman and kids that we gave the firewood to were doing. She said that the husband had not come back and probably never would. The woman's brother or some relative was going to move her to Roswell. I asked if the house was for sale and she said she would find out and let us know if it was and how much. I told her we really didn't need the lumber, then Tori said we needed some treated post about 8 feet long to build a retainer for a dirt driveway, it was news to me. Jackie said they had about 200 telephone pole cross arms that were ten feet long. They were used but in good condition, they were not any good to burn and nobody up here built fences so they were just stacked up over at their place. Tori asked if they wanted to trade them out for the money and any future trees that we had.

After breakfast we took the brush to the dump and then went to Jackie's. I made sure we all had gloves, and it was them carrying and me stacking. I was damned near running to keep up so I called a halt and told them that they made me drag all the brush, load all the heavy stuff, and treated me like a dog, then just looked at them. Julie asked what the point I was trying to make was. I told her I just wanted to make sure they were aware of it. Then they started handing me two at a time so it wouldn't take me as long and I could rest sooner. Damn I love these girls. We finished the lot we were working on and one more then moved everything back to Glen's.

Now these guys have been working, they were far enough in that the road was about 40 to 50 feet wide and they were having to move a lot of dirt for each foot gained, but the nice thing was they didn't have to load or haul it. They just pushed it over the side and kept on going. The road would get wider as they went in and that was even more dirt but the women we talked to at the kitchen said the men were saying they might finish a few days early. They told us that it was real slow until they got in far enough for the dozer and the excavator to both get on level ground and then it picked up as they started working together.

When we got home I called Glen to tell him that they were making a lot of progress and tell him about the Bobcat dozer attachment that just would not work because of the width. He said not to worry about the attachment. They had been to the Sutter factory close to Lake Tahoe and were on their way back. They were in Phoenix Arizona and had a Sutter 500 on a trailer. They would drive to Alamogordo and see us tomorrow.

I didn't tell the girls about the dozer, I just said that Glen and Neal would be here tomorrow. When they saw the little dozer they about beat me to death for not telling them. I told them since Tori and Trina have told me they can't drive a standard shift and can't drive the dump truck that I will have to be the driver of the new little trail machine. They just remembered that they had driven a few standard shifts. I told them that it was nice to know and that the dozer was an automatic. That got me slapped on the head by both of them. Brie hung her "be back in an hour" sign on the door and we all went to the pancake place.

Neal asked what else we needed to build and maintain the trails and everybody added something to the list. A gas powered post hole digger, a plate compactor, a roller compactor, a four wheeler with trailer, several dump truck loads of ¾ inch gravel, and a whole lot of shit we hadn't thought of. Neal wrote it all down. Glen said his reason for not wanting the trail any wider than four feet is because if it was, people would be driving all over the damned place and he didn't want them to. There would be no four wheelers or motorcycles other than the maintenance vehicle. We told him that we had our own road grader to keep the road in shape. The bathrooms for next year would be Porta Potties and the water would be a one thousand gallon tank on a raised stand with a locking fill cap. He said we were under budget due mainly to the speed the road was built and the surveyors needing to be somewhere else.

They wanted us to store the dozer and other equipment over the winter and we told him that we had bought enclosed carports for extra storage, and Neal wrote that down and said they would look into those instead of having steel ones made for shade and park table covers. They thought there would be some ground sinking over the winter after the snow melted and it would need gone over with the grader before the carports, water, and porta potties were brought in. They were going to buy water from T-Town and haul it with a tank truck. I told him we had just bought a brand new 500 gallon trailer mounted fuel tank with pump, hose, nozzle, battery, and solar charger for six thousand and that he might check that possibility. He wrote it down and asked what we pulled it with, when we told him the pickup he smiled and wrote it down.

They were going to have a gate out at the road with some kind of call box on it and the camp manager would drive down and let the people in. If their name was not on the list they were not coming in. I asked him how the names got on the list and he said only through their agent. He said that you couldn't just drive by and see the place and decide you wanted to visit a naturist camp. Tori asked about the pump truck for the porta potties and he said that the camp manager's one ton pickup would have a device on the back that had two bars and chains that somehow lifted and hauled them. They would be switched out depending on use and hauled to the gate where the pump and cleaning people would take care of them. They had been advised not to put in a septic system due to the ground settling for several years in the center of the camp. Trina asked why they didn't put them on the solid shelf around the rim. He said he didn't know and wrote it down.

Being her usual self, Tori told them that she thought they needed to discuss their plans with everyone they talked to and they would get some good input. She said that we argue about every lot we do until the one with the best idea wins, or we take parts from all the ideas and make one. I told them that the only constant in our plans was me dragging the brush, and that got me hit on the arm. Charley asked Glen if they would be able to keep the hunters off his property. He asked her if they hunted in the summer and she told him that when they do hunt, they field dress them and leave the guts laying wherever they are and sometimes the heads. Then she added that the only trees on the trails were cedar and that meant there was no shade, no rest areas, no shelter from sudden rain, and no water tanks or food for the deer and if there was, the people could watch them. There are deer all over T-Town, they will walk within 30 or 40 yards of you and sometimes closer. They might want to figure out how to use that. Maybe they could get it listed as a sanctuary for birds. She told them that looking at dirt gets old in a hurry. Any places that the trails cross should have markers pointing back to the camp and it wouldn't hurt to have markers along the way in case someone gets hurt. Neal's pen was really getting a work out. Then she said that most of all, they needed a swimming pool. Glen said they had pools at the others but this one was to be a wilderness camp. The look Charley gave him said it all. She said yeah, a real cedar wilderness. Then she said he could name it Cedar Glen. He told her that was the best idea so far and it became known as Cedar Glen.

Glen was going to pull the dozer to Cedar Glen since it was still hooked up to his truck. The girls still needed to go to the store and whatever else they had to do. I told him it would probably be two hours before we left. The girls were kind of wasting time hopping I would say it was too late to start, I told them I was leaving in 20 minutes and go run all the new off that little dozer. They started handing me boxes to load in the pickup, Charley rode with me to the place we bought ice and filled the big chest we had made, the other three were supposed to be buying groceries but it probably meant cookies, potato chips, and Beanie-Weenees. If you told Tori to pack a lunch she would put six cookies in a zip-lock bag. The girl was completely useless at domestic jobs. Charley could cook but she figured right quick that the others were no help so she refused to do it for them.

On the way to Cedar Glen we talked about what the opening next spring might do for T-Town. If the Glen had members that wanted to stay in the area so they could spend their days there and their nights in the comfort of a home, her mom's house might be a valuable rent property. Then we talked about what would have to be done to get it ready to use as a rental. She asked what we were going to do next summer when the trails needed maintenance and the camp was full of naked people. I didn't have a clue, but she thought that we were going to have to pull off our clothes and be the naked dirt daubers. She said it wouldn't bother her so I told her that she could be the one to do it. She thought the others would jump right in but thought that we would all need to meet with Glen and Neal to work it out. She thought that a female maintenance crew that would work naked, and get the job done, might be a rare thing. We joked about different scenarios with a naked crew. She said I could get an Egyptian headband with the head cloth, carry a short whip and when the campers came by they could sing some work chant and I could pop the whip. I asked what she would do when one of the locals saw her there, she said none of the locals could afford the entry fee, and she didn't give damn what they thought. Charley didn't talk about herself very often but something, or someone, had made her attitude towards others a very hard one.

The Brice's were waiting on us to unload the trail dozer and get the trailer unhooked from their pickup. Neal said they had both got a test drive on it but were not wanting to try to load or unload it. The trailer was nice and the tie down chains were all cut to length so you didn't have to wrestle a bunch of heavy chain. The ramps were flip down type and were easy to work. Tori climbed on the dozer and looked the controls over for a minute then fired it up. She let it run for a minute then started playing with the controls, she backed it off the trailer and waved Trina over they talked a few minutes then she drove it to the fuel trailer and shut it down. I guess she was waiting for me to fill it up. I was thinking that I was going to adjust her attitude and she must have seen the look I was giving her. She hopped down and started looking for the fuel cap. Trina got the hose and handed it to her. They got it filled and took turns learning how to operate it. Julie, Charley, and I got in Glen's pickup and we all went to see how the dozer work was coming along. We were amazed at the amount of work they had done. It is hard to get your mind to accept the amount of work that can be done when machines are running nonstop 24 hours a day.

The center was starting to fill and it looked like when they got to the closed end of the horseshoe they would have to start pushing dirt back toward the open end to get rid of it. Charley and Julie were both hitting the Brice brothers with a million questions so I didn't think they would need me. I walked over to the kitchen area to get a drink and talked to the women and a couple of guys. I told them it looked like there would be a lot of dirt left over and they said it would be used to form the roads up to each side and connect back to the road we had made. They would also have a short road that connected to the trail system. He asked if we were going to have Calcium Chloride sprayed on the roads to control the dust and erosion, so I yelled at Glen and the guy explained it to him and told him the name of a couple of companies that did it. Glen later told us that depending on the cost we might have it done next spring.

Tori and Trina worked until 5 and the rest of us talked about ways to make the camp more attractive to customers. Julie and Charley leaned towards entertainment and the cosmetics of the place. I leaned more to ease of maintenance, and Glen was into facilities. Neal just wrote as fast as he could. They asked Charley when it would start getting cold, it was the 2nd week of October. She said we really needed to start moving the equipment down the mountain and leave about the same time as the other crew did. She said that many times the weather would be good here, but you couldn't get through at Cloudcroft because it was a lot higher elevation.

Glen and Neal were leaving tonight for El Paso and then drive to the McAllen area in the tip of Texas where they lived and also where one of their large RV parks was located. Glen gave Charley his card and asked that she e-mail or call with any additional ideas. Tori and Trina stayed with the trail project and Charley, Julie and I started moving equipment to A-Town. It took 3 days to move everything but the trail dozer and trailer. We cleaned out the bunkhouse, drained the water system and water heaters, poured anti-freeze in the toilets. Loaded the trail dozer and went to take a last look at the campground. They were finished and were tearing down and loading their equipment. The place looked a hell of a lot different than the first time we saw it.

One of us decided that the equipment needed to be washed before we put it in our nice clean shop and the floor protector mats for the steel tracks were not here yet. The power washer we had should have been thrown away with the other junk. I didn't like the ones we could find locally so I had Julie call Clay to see if he had any ideas. She talked to him for half an hour to find out that the best ones were sold by an industrial supply and he could pick one up for her and get a better price. We had a lot of diesel in our tank trailer we didn't want to store over the winter so I filled the pickup while she went to get the money from Tori. I thought Charley would go with her but about 10 minutes later I saw Charley in the computer shop and asked who went to El Paso with Julie. She said Julie was going to lunch with Clay and would be gone all day, and that's when things started coming unwound.

It took a week to wash everything from top to bottom, inside and out, and underneath. We were painting the excavator and Julie was changing a hose on the little Bobcat when she suddenly asked how much vacation time she had. Tori told her as much as she needed and was she going to San Antonio. She said she was going to El Paso and practice with Clay for a Bobcat Rodeo that Bobcat was sponsoring. I asked her why she couldn't practice here and she said they were entering individually and also in the pairs competition. I told her that was cool, we would come and watch her compete. She said it wasn't in El Paso, it was in Tucson and if they placed high enough, they would go to the one in North Dakota. We were all quiet and just looking at her when Tori told her to take as much time as she wanted but to keep us informed of where she was and what her plans are if they changed. She said Clay was coming to get her tomorrow and that she needed to go to the bank and also get her clothes ready. Tori and Trina went with her.

I stood there for several minutes trying to figure out what I felt about Julie going. Charley finally said that I was the only one who had not seen it coming. That Julie and Clay had a bad case of the hots for each other. I told her that was no reason for her to just leave without warning. She reminded me of what I had said when she felt abandoned by her mother. She is just trying to find her way, and she can't see much of a future sharing a place with one guy and five girls. She was sure that if the thing with Clay didn't work out that she would be back. I told her that it didn't make me feel any better. She said that when I had gave the same speech to her that she hadn't felt any better either.

Charley went in the house and I strung all the brushes but the one I was using on a rod and left them soaking in the thinner. I painted for several hours and put it away. I walked into Brie's shop and watched her put a computer together. She asked if I wanted to take any local jobs, she had people needing a bunch of different things done. I told her to go ahead and schedule them and we would do them. She locked up the shop and we went in the house. It was a bit quiet but Trina said it was my turn to buy dinner so I called in a pizza order and told them I would pick it up. I remember paying for the pizza and I had three large pizzas when I walked out the door.

I remember seeing a bunch of high school guys coming towards me when one of them said there was no need to buy pizza, they would just take mine. I had both hands on the pizza and one of them hit me in the face and another grabbed the pizza. I really don't remember what happened after that but there were a lot of fist's flying and they got hurt, big time, busted up bad, hurt. I got handcuffed and locked in a police car while the cops were asking questions of everyone that saw what happened. Trina and Charley came looking for me and called the others. There were quite a few people who saw how it happened and told the truth. They had jumped me, and I was defending myself. Five of them were in the hospital and the other 3 were in jail. I was going to have a black eye and had a few other scrapes and bruises from being kicked. The only good thing was, there was no doubt in anyone's mind what had happened because the police had the security tape from the pizza place.

The next morning I was hurting all over but I was determined not to let anyone know. When Clay came to pick up Julie I was sad to see her go but I smiled and gave her a hug and waved good bye. Brie went to open the shop and the dirt daubers went back to painting. Trina handed me a card with a Doctor's name on it. She said he had talked to her last night and he was a witness to the fight. He had told her that he was pretty sure I had lost all control and that I was screaming that I would kill all of the rag headed son of a bitches. He was pretty sure that I was still fighting the war and I really needed to be seeing the VA or a private shrink. I continued painting and thought for a few minutes.

I asked them if they were afraid of me, Tori said that they would go anywhere with me at any time. Then Charley said that one thing I needed to do for sure was to speak up next time I had feelings for someone so that another case of someone leaving that I was in love with wouldn't happen. I told her that she didn't understand, that I loved them all and it would have been the same no matter which of them left. They didn't say anything but exchanged several thoughtful looks, then Tori went and got Brie.

Tori asked Brie how the computer shop was doing and if she was liking it. She said that she had made back all that had been spent on it including the signs. Trina motioned for her to continue and she told us that she would rather be a dirt dauber because we had each other and she had nothing. Charley said that we would catch a dirt dauber and let it sting her on the left tit and she would be in. Brie told her to go get it and started pulling her T shirt off. We were laughing and Trina told her that Charley was not serious and she told us that Charley might not be but she damned sure was.

Tori asked her if she knew that I loved them, and that the three of them loved me. Brie said she better make it four. I told her to go put a closed sign on her door and come get a paint brush. She told me that was about the most romantic thing she had ever heard. We were all in a much better mood and the black eye and bruises didn't hurt. When she came back Tori held up her hand to get our attention and she said we had lost a member because of secrets and no communication and there would be no secrets in this dauber nest and if you have something to say, say it. Charley said OK can we go to the Mexican food place?

On the way to the restaurant Charley asked Brie how she felt about us working in the nudist camp next summer. She said she would keep her eyes closed. Charley asked her how she was going to keep the other people's eyes closed when they looked at her. I told her not to worry that Charley would be right next to her.