A day at the circus

When I heard the rumble -- and then peered out a dormer window to see the Ready-Mix truck lumbering up our narrow street -- I knew it wasn't going to squeeze under the sapodilla tree, let alone past it.

I mean, have you looked at one of those things up close? Whew. The guys were scrambling as if someone had sounded an alarm, and I had visions of wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow running back and forth.

Big Bertha was being driven expertly by a big woman whose name probably wasn't Bertha -- she's in the magenta shirt -- and as that large rear end maneuvered into place, the answer pulled up: a pickup truck with a little pumping rig in tow. I couldn't help but think of the poor schmo with the bucket and broom behind the elephants in the circus parade.

Elephants raise their tails when they void, but cement mixers lower theirs: the chute came down and sluiced copious volumes of concrete into the bucket of the little rig, and the mix got pumped down a fat tube across the yard to the pier holes. Plop, plop.

Deposit made, the big mixer lumbered off. The guys in the pickup moved some leftovers with their shovels, hosed everything down and followed Bertha home.

Greatest show on earth.