Sunday, July 30, 2006
A little piece of Africa
I’m making slow progress on the walk in back of the house. Last weekend, feeling a little like
Fred Flintstone, I bought some more rocks at the T.H. McVey Stone Company, conveniently located a mile or so from us in Watertown, MA.
It is amazing to me that McVey’s still exists where it does, across the street from a Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, Home Depot, and other signs of the post-industrial, chain driven economy.
McVey’s sells stone. That’s what they do. You want your granite, they got it. You want your tombstone (or someone else’s), they got it. You want your bluestone (tumbled or untumbled), they got it. You want your plastic patio furniture, forget it.
As far as I can tell, they don’t have a website, or I’d link to it. Go there if you're shopping for stone.
Most of the stone in the walk is bluestone from McVey’s, but I’ve incorporated a few other finds, like a few pieces of granite curbstone that I found in the woods behind our office, left over from parking lot construction. And
my personal favorite, the lighter colored stone in this picture, which we found in Nova Scotia last year.
If I’m remembering correctly an educational sign from a provincial park, much of the stone that forms that stretch of Nova Scotia coastline matches stone found in Africa – when the continents split apart, some of this stone went east, some went west. The rock that produced our paving stone went west. It got heaved up, and weathered into sheets along its fracture lines, and eventually calved off a piece small enough to be put in the trunk of our car. (I didn’t declare it at customs, but I bet African-Canadian paving stone has a duty schedule all its own.)
Fred Flintstone, I bought some more rocks at the T.H. McVey Stone Company, conveniently located a mile or so from us in Watertown, MA.It is amazing to me that McVey’s still exists where it does, across the street from a Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, Home Depot, and other signs of the post-industrial, chain driven economy.
McVey’s sells stone. That’s what they do. You want your granite, they got it. You want your tombstone (or someone else’s), they got it. You want your bluestone (tumbled or untumbled), they got it. You want your plastic patio furniture, forget it.
As far as I can tell, they don’t have a website, or I’d link to it. Go there if you're shopping for stone.
Most of the stone in the walk is bluestone from McVey’s, but I’ve incorporated a few other finds, like a few pieces of granite curbstone that I found in the woods behind our office, left over from parking lot construction. And
my personal favorite, the lighter colored stone in this picture, which we found in Nova Scotia last year.If I’m remembering correctly an educational sign from a provincial park, much of the stone that forms that stretch of Nova Scotia coastline matches stone found in Africa – when the continents split apart, some of this stone went east, some went west. The rock that produced our paving stone went west. It got heaved up, and weathered into sheets along its fracture lines, and eventually calved off a piece small enough to be put in the trunk of our car. (I didn’t declare it at customs, but I bet African-Canadian paving stone has a duty schedule all its own.)
