Grumbles From The Grave — Robert A. Heinlein — (1989)

June 10, 1951: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

It is ten-thirty and I must be up around six. Today being Sunday I worked all day alone on the house. It continues to be an unending headache, but we are beginning to see the end-about another month if we don’t run into more trouble. The biggest headache, now that the bank account is refreshed, is finding and keeping mechanics. This town is in a war building boom and every mechanic has his pick of many jobs. I should have four or five working; I have two, plus myself. I work at any trade which is missing at the moment. Fortunately, I can do most of the building trades myself, after a fashion. I have a stone mason doing cabinet work, which will give you some idea of the difficulties of getting help. Often I think of your comment, more than a year ago, that you hoped I would not have trouble but never knew of a case of a person building his own home who did not have lots of trouble. Well, we surely have had it, but the end is in sight-if I don’t go off my rocker first.

What am I saying? I am off my rocker!

April 17, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Actually, I am not studying Arabic very much nor am I writing; I am moving massive boulders with pick and shovel and crowbar and block and tackle, building an irrigation dam-a project slightly smaller than the Great Pyramid but equal to Stonehenge. I no longer have any

“Project Stonehenge:” The creation of a decorative pool was undertaken by the Heinleins alone-and made them a two — , wheelbarrow family. fat on my tummy at all but have a fine new collection of aches, pains, bruises, and scratches.

May 15, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

We are now a two-wheelbarrow family. That accounts for the delay.

Don’t brush it off. Are you a two-wheelbarrow family? How many two-wheelbarrow families do you know? I mean to say: two-Cadillac families are common; there are at least twenty in our neighborhood, not counting Texans. But we are the only two-wheelbarrow family I know of.

It came about like this: I started building Ginny’s irrigation dam. Simultaneously Ginny was spreading sheep manure, peat moss, gravel, etc., and it quickly appeared that every time she wanted the wheelbarrow I had it down in the arroyo-and vice versa. A crisis developed, which we resolved by going whole hog and phoning Sears for a second one. Now we are both happily round-shouldered all day long, each with his (her) own wheelbarrow.

(Live a little! Buy yourself a second one. You don’t know what luxury is until you have a wheelbarrow all your own, not constantly being borrowed by your spouse.)

This dam thing (or damn’ thing) I call (with justification) Project Stonehenge; it is the biggest civil engineering feat since the Great Pyramid. The basis of it is boulders, big ones, up to two or three tons each-and I move them into place with block and tackle, crowbar, pick and shovel, sweat, and clean Boy Scout living. Put a manila sling around a big baby, put one tackle to a tree, another to another tree, take up hard and tight with all my weight on each and lock them-then pry at the beast with a ninety-pound crowbar of the sort used to move freight cars by hand, gaining an inch at a time.

Then, when at last you have it tilted up, balanced…and ready to fall forward, the sling slips and it falls back where it was. This has been very good for my soul.

(And my waist line-I am carrying no fat at all and am hard all over. Well, moderately hard.)

EDITOR ‘s NOTE: Robert enjoyed doing rock work, and the grounds were greatly improved by three decorative pools and revetments done with rocks.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY

EDITOR ‘s NOTE: We loved our home in Colorado Springs-Robert had done so much in the way of rock work outside, and we had lavished our care on it for some years.

But there were two reasons why we had to leave. One was my health. FotAome years, it had become increasingly evident that I could not stand the altitude-I had “mountain sickness. ” The other reason was that the house was too small for our files of papers and books. We left Colorado on the seventeenth anniversary of our marriage, to look on the West Coast for land for building. Three months were spent on this quest before we bought the land in Santa Cruz.