Can 'yal Dig It?

I have a backyard. You'd never know it from my front yard, but I do have one. It actually stretches across the road nearly an acre and a half. We own a little peice of land across the street, but the main part of the yard is in the back - currently a giant hole and two oddly positioned hills that squeeze the garage nearly to death.

Mike has been digging out from the rightern-most hill, the biggest, with his John Deere skid steer. (Which has car tires on it and a busted bucket, making the task a real pain in the ask, if you know what I mean.) Anyway, our plan is to flatten the hills and put the dirt in the hole. The hole is so huge that we'd never fill it per say, but we can graduate the cliff that now exists there and bury all the prickers and poison ivy and gross stuff. Once all that's been done, Mike's going to build a dirt bike/4wheeler track in accordance with his fantasies of riding without being chased by police, greenies, or helicopers. (Because Plymouth feels the need to waste thousands of tax dollars just to chase a few Sunday riders in a HELICOPTER. Why? Why? But that's a tangent for another time.)

As we dig all this dirt though, the interesting thing is that we find stuff. And when I say stuff, I mean trash. But not yucky gross nasty ew trash - old trash. I mean, first 'ol Herb Allen owns it in 1910, and soon after, a depression era couple that for sure buried all their trash in the back yard. (Which may have created the odd hills, you never know. I'm just waiting to dig up a shed or a car or a coffin or something.) So first off, there's 39 tires at the bottom of the hole. 39 tires!!!! Insane! Also, plenty of metal, glass bottles, old lawn chairs, buckets, wire fencing and garden stuff and tools. The other day, though, we began to find really really old and interesting stuff.

First came the sicle. (Is that how you spell it?) You know, the tool the Grim Reeper holds. (Not Reaper, Reeper - like reep reep reep. Private joke. DK understands.) Now the wooden handle had long ago rotted away, but the metal part was intact. Maybe this was from when 'ol Herb Allen and his dad there farmed their own farms in their backyards.

Then, we found the steering wheel. Wouldn't it be crazy if it was from the fated Ford? The metal of it is all rusted, but the vinyl or plastic or whatever it is is mostly intact. And somebody scratched letters into the vinyl! They don't spell out any words as far as I can tell. I'm still trying to figure it out. I may make it into a wreath for my door - a little auto-art, my favorite! I'll be sure to post a pic of it when I'm done.