But your new shoes are worn at the heels
And your suntan does rapidly peel
And your wise men don’t know how it feels
To be thick as a brick.
– Jethro Tull
By Randall Grantham
Community Columnist
As I’ve written before, I have a brick problem.
It started in 1994 after my wife complained about having to walk around the house in her high-heels through the yard to get to her car. I was able to get some old street bricks from my friend Trey, whose family owned a road paving company and had oodles of old chipped up bricks removed from Tampa streets that they had re-paved.
I learned how to lay them as a walkway as I went and loved the result. After going through about 2000 bricks completing the first run connecting the front door to the back lot, I begged him for more. I needed to tie in the back door, you see. Another thousand bricks, and I was hooked.
I started looking for bricks wherever I could find them
I would hit up construction crews to see if they could spare a few. I took part in the tearing down of the old double boiler at Newbern’s citrus packing plant at Nebraska and Sinclair Hills to salvage the red bricks from around the firebricks that the metal recycling guy stingily refused to relinquish. They make up the path from the front door to the front gate.
I was spotted by more than one judge in downtown Tampa loading up bricks that were removed from the paved-over street in front of the Courthouse that was torn up for a water line fix. That’s what I used to pave the “old garbage can trail” and then, along with stray street bricks that I refuse to say where I got, completed the path all the way around the house when I tied in the “Thanksgiving day trail.”
I still wanted more. I needed to connect the front walk all the way to the gate and I wanted to do a BBQ pad, maybe even a circular drive I had a problem. A brick problem.
My wife, even though she realized I had this problem, became an enabler. When we had the bathroom remodeled, she went with the construction guy to the dump and came back with 60 or 70 firebricks that somebody was going to toss away. I picked up another 50 or so from a handyman friend in Homosassa. Still, it wasn’t enough. It takes about 4 ½ bricks to get one square foot of pavement and 150 bricks didn’t do squat for me. My resistance had built up.
I even went so low as to post a Reader’s Exchange listing in the Times asking for bricks…for my BBQ pad, I wrote. I thought I hit the jackpot when several readers responded and I got over 600 from one great guy. Still, that’s only 100 square feet. I wanted more. Well, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
I got a call the other day from my friends at BRW Contractors here in LOL. They had been hired to tear down a portion of the old Badcock building in Ybor City. It was built in 1906 and was all brick. Antique brick. Solid bricks. With none of those holes they put in the new ones. I was hyper-ventilating.
Three dump-truck loads later, I think I have enough bricks. They are piled 6 feet high and 50 feet long in front of my house. Did I say piled? That implies order. They are dumped, in huge piles that I now have to clean individually and stack for my next projects. I cleaned about 100 the first night and it didn’t even make a dent in the pile.
I hope to keep at it and maybe pay one of my clients to get the job done, but in the meantime, I look at it as good protection. It’s like I have a blast wall around my house. For when the trouble comes, you know?
Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. He can be reached at . Copyright 2010 RCG
