2/20/2015

Weeding the green roof

Another couple firsts for my job history:


  1.  I checked out a sledge hammer. 
  2.  I helped weed the green roof.


True: Janie the goat lady and I used to climb through a restroom window onto the flat roof above the children's library room to clear out the downspouts, but that was a long time ago. We didn't want the roof to leak down into the Dewey seven and eight hundreds again. All in the line of duty preventing soggy widdle riddle books!

True: I watched kids playing Tarzan with the vines hanging down from a green roof.



But this time I got to be up on the green roof! And got paid to pull weeds! And did not fall off!

True: My dad occasionally paid us a quarter for a grocery sack full of dandelions and spurge dug out of the front yard, but this time I didn't have KLMS on my transistor radio.

False: The mythical giant Roc from Ray Harryhausen's "Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" carried off the green roof goats.

True: Jay Ward is a major inspiration in my creative life. There I am trying not to fall off the green roof with the theme song of the 1960's Jay Ward cartoon episodes of George of the Jungle stuck in my head.

From a library standpoint, check-out procedures for the sledgehammer were pretty lax. I didn't have to fill out an application or provide proof of address. I'm not sure when the sledgehammer is due back, or the fine if it is late.

True: My dad sent me out to the back yard to practice hitting golf balls. I managed to hit myself in the leg and get a heckuva multicolored bruise. I never became the golfer my dad hoped.

Check out this sledgehammer technique video. Avoid the bruises!

© 2015 Nancy L. Ruder

2 comments:

Kathleen said...

Love this--the image of Tarzan vines, the climbing, all of it.

Collagemama said...

Thanks, birthday girl!