eased the whole building onto the trailers. That same night, the houses were set down on new foundations, and the people went right on living in them.
At one place, a big ledge of rock was in the way of the new road. Men called powder monkeys blasted the ledge to smithereens with explosive. Then Charlie came in with his caterpillar tractor and a rock rake. Unlike a garden rake, which you pull, Charlie’s rock rake scratched up rocks and pushed them ahead of it. He shoved all the loose chunks of stone away, but several big ones were too far underground for the rake to pry them loose. So Charlie put a ripper on behind his tractor.
The ripper had strong prongs that could dig down deep and get a good hold on a boulder. The frame that held the prongs was hollow. For very heavy work, Charlie filled the hollow frame with sand to give it a lot of weight so the prongs wouldn’t slip. To pry out the very largest boulders, Charlie sometimes got another driver to hitch his caterpillar onto the ripper. Then the two tractors, chugging together, did the job.
After the bulldozers and scrapers and rakes had built a rough bed for the highway, Charlie helped to smooth it down and get it all ready for finishing. He used a long six-wheel motor grader for the job.
The motor grader had its Diesel engine in the rear, above the four wheels that did the pushing. The guiding wheels were way off at the front, and in between was the scraping blade, placed where Charlie could watch it.
Charlie could set the blade at almost any angle, just as a barber can tilt a long-bladed razor. And Charlie was proud of the way he had left the road almost as smooth as a barber leaves a man’s face.