Street Action

 

4/28/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood

I was just finishing lunch when the floors and windows suddenly started shaking: A jackhammer was ripping into the pavement in front of a neighbor’s house. Grabbing my bag on the way, I dashed upstairs to sketch the action.

This is all I was able to catch of the jackhammering business. 

Too late for the noisy jackhammer, I caught the workers manually removing large chunks of broken concrete and dumping them into the shovel on the opposite end of the jackhammer (multi-use heavy equipment is so cool!). They had dug a shallow hole.

Shortly after that, a truck with a tank arrived – a pumper truck, I guess? A hose was lowered into a hole that had been revealed, and something liquid was sucked up. I had to leave for an appointment, so I couldn’t catch whatever happened next. When I returned, I saw that they had patched up the pavement.

The patch was only temporary, however. The following week, a concrete mixer arrived with a large crew of workers (below). A tree blocked most of the mud truck from my view, but I had fun trying to catch the various gestures made by the crewmen as they smoothed out the new pavement.

5/5/26 The concrete mixer arrived.

What would I do with myself without all this front-row action?