This Damn House – Capitalist Structure

“I have a great idea,” said the fellow that built the kitchen on the back of the house eighty years ago. “I’ll pour some concrete stairs and a flat concrete walkway to those stairs along the back of the house. This will keep my boots clean.” Right he was.
“I have a great idea,” said the fellow that owned my house in the 1980s. “I have this concrete walkway and staircase already, but it looks so plain. I will build a raised garden bed along the edge and frame it in with four by fours. This will look pretty full of tulips in the spring.” Right he was.
“I hate flowers,” thought the fellow that owned my house in the late 1990s. “Especially tulips. I’ll build a deck right over that goddamn flower bed, those old concrete stairs, and that stupid walkway and it will raise the value of my house.” A jerk, but right he was.
Also, he was an idiot and a litterbug. I count abandoned houses, old unused roads, and broken down sheds as nothing more than really big litter.
When I moved in, I noticed this odd flowerbed resting under the deck, but figured it couldn’t do any damage. How wrong I was. Over the years, the dirt sloped back toward the house and directed all of the rainwater right back to my basement. I decided to do something about it one night while drinking, I’m sure.
Last summer, I pulled out all of the four by four timbers that held the original bed. The best of those timbers became the edge of my patio in front of my shed. The worst burned in last October’s bonfire. I still had the dirt to contend with.
A bit of back-story on this dirt. My neighbor tells me that one day in the 1990s, a fellow offered him and my home’s old owner a dump truck full of mulch. All but a wheelbarrow full of this ended up inside of those timber frames – slowly turning into dirt – lying in wait to ruin a few weeks of my life.
Beginning last weekend, I decided to spend those ruined weeks. My deck, at its closest point to the earth, is only about a foot up. At the highest, maybe two feet. To remove the five cubic meters of dirt from under the deck, without razing the deck, which was my first thought, I would have to belly-crawl under there with some sort of sleigh, load the sleigh with dirt and drag it out. All this, while lying face down in rotting mulch and being attacked by my neighbor’s dog with vicious consistency. Oh boy.
I have a four by two foot plywood board I found under that same deck last year and a long length of clothesline that was used all last summer and twice this summer in its intended way before snapping in stiff winds, throwing my clothes across my neighbor’s yard. Two good shirts died that day. May they rest in piece (as stuffing for a new pillow). Anyway, I drilled two holes in the board, looped the rope through, harnessed it over a shoulder, and crawled in carrying my garden trowel in my teeth.
Each load is enough dirt to put about three inches around two rows of six plants in my garden. I’ve done this now five times. I’m eaten by mosquitoes every time.
I should be done by August. So remember, dear reader, if you decide to build some new beautiful outdoor structure, remove whatever was there when you showed up. Even better, call a team of archeologists to dig down about fifteen feet just to be sure there is nothing there. They need the work anyway.