REBUILDING GLORIA ROAD

SLASHING DANGER IN THE DARK

By Newcomb

The rains came! More than we have had in a long time.  Keller Rd. was rutted and water was standing in the fields.  The whole valley’s low place, just north of Sun City, was full- level with the 215 hi-way.  Strands of hay were caught on the fences.  This proved that the water had been as high as the barbed wire.

Gloria Road was closed, right at our north property line.  There is a natural ridge there with a dropping off to the north.  The ridge acted like a dam, stopping the water flowing north along the road.  More water shed off the hills from the west and added to the flood.

When I came back to the ranch, the water had subsided.  The standing pond, that had hid the washout, had drained east through the deep cut across the road.

A pickup truck was still stuck here!  The front wheels had dropped into the fresh cut.  The cut was deep enough to drop the truck but its frame was resting on the south bank.

Traffic had found detours around our ranch.  Someone had stuck up a stick with a red rag at the top to warn any stranger driving through.  Just now, the stuck truck was warning enough!  It was still there three days later.

Note:  Gloria was an undedicated road.  The County did not build or maintain it.  The landowners along the way, each more or less, cared for that portion that passed their property.  Most wanted to use the road themselves.  It was a point of pride to use your tractor to improve the road.  After a rain, someone would smooth the road again for a ¼ mile or so.  Some sections were better kept than others.  It was usually passable to automobiles.

(Because Gloria was a non-road, four property lines met very close to where the truck was stuck.

 Eventually the County will take, (owners will dedicate) some 22 ½ feet of property from each side and for as long as the road and then their properties will be separated by the width of the road.  -  Try to imagine how many acres of California are dedicated in this manner.  Private property has shrunk as a result.)

My friend, Harold, on the NW corner, my neighbor Mr. Bentley on the NE corner and me on the SE corner met together, just like our property did.  The SW owner was non- resident. 

We three had met before and had cooperated in neighborly ways.  With little or no formality, we went about a fairly large public project.  We would contribute a reasonable amount of time and money.  We each had personal benefit from the work that was planned.  For me, water would be directed from flow across the corrals and orchard.  My tenants could enjoy direct access to Gloria and I could more safely tractor up the line.

Bentley’s would be protected from being flooded from both sides of the road.

A ditch would direct the collected water along our shared line to the East.

Bentley had a heavy, flat bed truck to haul pipe and a discount source for pipe. I would do most of the tractor work.  Harold would pay a 1/3 of the cash costs of material.  Also, after the project was finished, He would maintain the catch basin on his up-stream side of the road.  (Harold has suffered a stroke, recovered, and now has moved away.)

The Temecula cement pipe Co would give us free pipe that they would ordinarily crush.  And they would load it for us !  There were no papers to sign. We just backed up Bentley’s truck and their forklift put it on board.

Note:  These pipe lengths were damaged.  Their flanges had been hurt from moving them in the pipe yard, hitting each other or something being dropped.  The pipe has male and female ends that fit together.  Paying customers reject the damaged pieces.  The company crushes these to save space in the yard.

We carried off the several pieces that make up a City Street’s, manhole, except for the cover.  This included the vertical pipe with the metal climbing rungs and the flared funnel piece.

These pieces were about 30 inches in diameter. My small truck could carry the smaller two-foot pipe to use as culverts for my corrals.  (Soon, Horses and tractors from Gloria wouldn’t have to jump the road ditch.)

There was only about half enough free pipe.  Mr. Bentley provided a twenty-foot section of new corrugated metal culvert.  This was his 1/3 cash donation to the project.

By the time, we had collected this material; other people had dumped stuff into the cut so as to be able to use the road.  O’Neal a neighbor, and contractor, who lived near by, helped us with his large backhoe.  We paid him for three hours.                                   We blocked off the road while he cleaned out the cut, trimming the sides to take our pipe.  He finished the bottom of the trench to carry the proper grade down stream.  I helped him by standing in the ditch with a marked stick to show the depth. 

We dropped in the long metal pipe first.  He also placed the flared section in the intake to help funnel water from the catch basin, into the culvert. (It was a pleasure to watch O’Neal use the backhoe as a giant hand to carve the opening and position the pipe.)  He finished by recovering that part of the cut with packed dirt and gravel.  The west half of the road was re-opened before dark!  It would be several days before the rest was finished.

The heavy cement pipe is formed over a large mesh of re-bar.  The metal holds the shape even when cracks form in the cement.  Bentley left his truck parked in the road so that I could unload the free pipe.

When I rolled off the large sections, I used an old tractor tire for a cushion on the ground.  This softened the fall but some of the abused pipe cracked anyway.  I found that I could roll the heavy ten-foot sections by pushing them like a big barrel.  The chest, high, diameter gave lots of leverage. 

They left a large flat trail on the sandy soil.  They didn’t sink into the soft dirt!  If I needed to ‘steer’ the section to its proper place, I could run it over a 2X4 stick, balanced, near the centerline.  This allowed me to change its direction.  I placed a similar stick in the bottom of the ditch too.

(Here we had been very lucky. The backhoe had come within inches of cutting a large buried telephone cable.  It was exposed with a hand shovel!    I was able to undercut it to form nicely below our pipe.)

The stick made two sections line up closely and to be easier to push into closure.  It was a trick, plus luck, to drop the sections so that they didn’t chip their flanges any worse than they were, or to be too far apart.

When I had help, I used the tractor to push the pipe along to finally drop out of sight, where directed.  (Sometimes we ‘won’, other times we didn’t!)  I tried to have damaged areas facing the bottom, where it was easier to patch the openings.  I cemented the sections together once they were in place.  I ended up with a ring of cement covering the joints, all around the pipe.                                                                                                                

                                    Above: the two pipes merge into a “Y”

First, I placed wet cement between the ditch bottom and the pipe.  Then, backfilled dirt close to the joint to be the form as I built up to half the diameter on both sides.  When that was cured in place, I placed a band of tarpaper over the top of the open crack and covered it with a six- inch wide band of cement.  (The strips of paper kept the wet cement from pouring through the cracks.) 

Finally, I worked on the inside of the pipe.  I could cement all of the bottom of the pipe, and half way up the sides.  This smoothed the path of the water that seldom would fully fill the pipe.  The join of the metal pipe to the cement sections was close but not perfect.  I tapered the cement patch to blend the two.

As soon as the pipes were set beyond the traveled width of the road, I used the tractor to push and grade the road back into place over the culvert.  As the trench filled, the tractor wheels were driven back and forth through the fill, to pack the pipe into place.

Now Gloria was fully open.  There was much more to do before the next rains!

All the drainage from the west edge of Gloria now could move north and east by passing through the new culvert.  The East side, my side, needed a ‘Y’ connection to join the diverted stream.  This leg would be half the diameter of the main pipe.

I picked the most broken end to taper into the ‘Y’.  I dressed it to a proper angle, removing chunks of concrete and cutting away the metal skeleton. 

This smaller road ditch was entering the culvert above the expected water level.  There would be no reverse flow!

I set the tractor blade to form a ‘V’ and opened a small ditch along the East side of Gloria Road.  This picked up the water that had been washing through the corrals and fruit orchard.  I didn’t know where it should be but used the line of power poles to indicate the edge of the road.  As the cement ‘Y’ extended the culvert, I could cover more of the deep ditch.  I really needed 15 feet more of pipe.

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It was nearly dark.  That happens fast as the sun sets behind Harold’s hill.  There was enough time to pack down the last fill of dirt.  I was purposely driving my tractor wheel between the buried pipe and the ditch bank, also covered.  (As the curved pipe sloped away from the bank, a ‘V’ of fill would restore a flat surface, to drive over.)  This worked as expected until I was near the open end of the pipe.  Unsupported by the pipe, the bank slowly gave way beneath the tractor!

At a slow count, the tractor moved forward with the brake on!  It turned almost on its side.  The ditch now widened by, the caved in south bank, accepted the tractor, driver and blade.  We all sank down into the six-foot deep, ditch.  I rode it down like a cowboy on a fallen horse.  I could move my legs, I wasn’t pinned, but it was now fully dark and I was lying on my side at grave depth.  I could smell the close, damp earth and the odor of spilling, gasoline; my mind went to the hot exhaust-manifold……….  As I climbed onto the tractor wheel and out of the ditch, I could see that a car had already stopped.  “Are you all right?  Can we help?”  I thought so, I said, “yes” to both questions.

(I couldn’t guess that getting the tractor out of the ditch would be more dangerous than falling into it!)  A neighbor that I didn’t know, left in a hurry saying, “I’ll be back with my tractor.”

I walked the longest distance, diagonally, across our ten acres. (From the NW corner to the SE corner.)  George Champion, tenant in #1, was home and was ready to bring his welder’s truck down to help.  It was like a wrecker with a boom and winch plus a compressor and welding generator.  I rode along and he backed up to the north side of the ditch and my wreck!

George climbed down to the tractor and hooked up a chain to his tow hitch.  The rear tractor wheel was caught on the end of the pipe.  The load shook but didn’t lift. The tensioned chain parted!   I didn’t see anything, it was dark, I didn’t hear anything, the engine was roaring.  I felt for the chain on the soft dirt, to try again.  I was combing the dirt with my fingers and felt nothing!  George soon came up to me with a broken hook in his hand.  It had failed at the hitch!  The chain had slashed through the air throwing itself past the tractor and me.  I could have been dead in a second.

 I only had a second to think about my good fortune.  Jiggling headlights, on my new friend’s tractor, were hurrying up to us.  Men, who hadn’t seen each other before, with different machines, worked together in the dark, as if they had seen the tractor drop into the ditch and turn on its side. 

The rescue tractor with its skip-loader chained so as to lift and George’s chain re-hitched to the truck’s tow ball lifted and righted my tractor………….UP and OUT It was soon back on its wheels, parked in a safe place.

It cranked up promptly and there was enough gas left to drive it, back to the barn.  Nothing was bent or broken. (Fifty-year old 8N Ford tractors had little exposure to damage.)  It was mostly a large, cast iron box with tough wheels.  Strong bars protected the vulnerable, radiator when we needed to push heavy things around.

The new neighbor didn’t leave his name.  He drove off into the dark without a thank you.  He knew we were ready to help him, before he helped us!  Gloria was his road too.

Rancho Arbole Grande was sold before the project was wrapped up.  When the rain

Came, Gloria passed the test!  The grades and pipe sizes were correct.  My shallow ditch on the East side deepened itself by more than two feet! 

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When you take Gloria Road on a rainy day, remember this story about the WASHOUT

And, drive safely, right on by!

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I must remind Mr.Bentley that, now, he will be the only one to keep the catch basin, clean.