Hillbilly Stonehenge

I met Dale Richardson last week while trespassing in his yard.

I’d like to think there was an invitation. It was a “Field of Dreams” kinda thing – a wee Stonehenge, or Hillbilly Henge, as I like to call it. Dale built it and I came.

I found it by accident, detouring around town to avoid a traffic jam. So now, after dropping the kids off at school, I take the long way home. The rolling hills put me in a better headspace and I certainly don't miss the concrete jungle.

I’d see Dale outside doing something to his yard just about every day. “What’s your story?” I kept thinking. I wanted to stop several times, but the light was never quite right. Then last Tuesday, I woke to cirrus clouds feathered across the sky. Sunbeams streamed through the forest into my bedroom. My golden hour was about to vanish with the morning mist, so I dropped the kids off, and hightailed it to the henge.

Dale was on the far side of the yard, cutting squares of sod – transplanting them under a maple tree where years of erosion had washed the grass away. I snapped a few shots before he wandered over.

We never even introduced ourselves – just fell in like old friends, trading stories, seeing who could get the loudest laugh. We talked so long I missed my first call. I wasn't worried. The talking heads could wait.

“What do you do?” Dale asked. I didn’t tell him I was an enterprise banker.

“Well, I like to climb trees and look at the stars. Lately I’ve been learning to play the mouth harp. Makes my meetings go by a little faster. Oh – and I’m still looking for this food truck that I found once. Best burrito ever, but I can’t remember where the truck sits now. Maybe it moved on. Maybe it never even existed.”

It’s all about the chase. Chaos is where fun hides.

Dale didn’t ask what paid the bills. Apparently, my burrito philosophy was an acceptable response. Instead, he launched into a grand tale about retiring as an adult and working full-time as a kid again. Midway through, he shared the origins of Hillbilly Henge.

“Every time I mowed over there by the woods, I’d hit the same darn rock with the deck of my mower. One day I had enough, so I fetched a shovel and started digging.”

He spoke with a half-smile and wink in his eye. As the story unfolded, I pictured the old man walking with a jump and a skip – a modern Dick Van Dyke, marching to the beat of his own drum, defying age. Poetry in motion.

So Dale dug and sweated
Dale dug and swore
Dale dug ’til he couldn’t dig anymore
His Hillbilly Henge isn’t Silverstein lore
It’s all true
I’m just an alliteration whore

Okay, that was uncalled for. My bad. I’ll stop. My parents forced Shel Silverstein on me at a young age, so it’s no wonder I turned to a life of rhyme. See? There it is again. I lied. Can't help it.

We’re cut from the same cloth – Dale and I. Darb and Dale. Manhood never meant that we had to put away childish things. We simply repackaged them. We still dig in the dirt, but our toys grew up to become mighty machines.

There Dale was, digging a four-ton rock out of the ground with a shovel. Most men would stop there, but this kid wasn’t done playing. He had another game in the barn that was louder and more fun. So he rolled out the big guns. He should’ve started with the backhoe, before he broke his back, but he didn't know he was digging up half of Appalachia when he started.

Then a side door swung open from the house. Dale’s better half stepped out and hollered,

“What the heck are you doing to my garden?”

Truth be told, Dale didn’t know himself. He just wanted to see how big the thing was. His backhoe could lift six thousand pounds, but the boulder wasn’t budging. At best, he could nudge one end sideways an inch or two at a time.

“You want me to come inside?” Dale smiled.

“No!” His wife smiled back.

That was the end of the argument. I’ve heard of this phenomenon before. Some older couples fight with such finesse that they both win – without either one admitting it.

So Dale pushed that boulder back and forth, side to side, inch by inch. Five hours later, his machine started making the same sounds Dale had made earlier – the four-letter kind.

“FLNK!”

Fortunately for the backhoe, Dale treats his machines better than his own back. Playtime was over.

At this point, Dale and his big rock were sitting right smack-dab in the middle of the front yard. According to his wife, this is where they would spend most of their time together.

Years passed. More rocks appeared. Smaller ones, softer ones, quartz and granite. None as big as the first, but they were perfect for sitting, shooting the breeze with neighbors and performing sacrificial rituals.

Okay. Nobody was spilling goat’s blood, but you have to admit – it looks like a scene right out of Narnia. You know, the big slab where they tied Aslan up?

Truth be told, Dale and his friends were good God-fearing folk. I can’t say as much about the circle of rocks. They aren't afraid of anything. Inanimate objects don’t have feelings.

Yet, these rocks seemed to whisper something older than language. They stand. STILL. ETERNAL. Newlyweds would occasionally stop by to capture, in a flash, what they hoped to be everlasting love.

Dale dug for a rock and unearthed a monument – a meeting place, a marker of time. Long after we’re dust, those stones will stand, a backyard Hillbilly Stonehenge whispering in silent repose:

“Do not go gentle into that good night
Come play in the chaos
Come chase the light”