The things they buried, pt. 3: My next door neighbor, Matt, has been doing a lot of digging in his yard. He and his wife, Iva, are new neighbors, renovating the bungalow that used to belong to my friend Dale -- a musician and recording engineer, who recently moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Today, Matt and I got into a cross-the-fence conversation about the underground scene here in Echo Park. Matt said they have dug up not just a bicycle but a washing machine. Dig that.

Well, put it out in the front yard! Where it belongs!

Except I presume it went into the dumpster, to be buried somewhere else.

Meanwhile, across the street, Angela and Rik are adding a room to their home. The addition calls for digging, and of course Chicken Corner has been over there, pecking around. Dragging back pieces of sandstone to our yard, as have the other neighbors. We're as busy as Argentine ants moving the earth around. I even borrowed a wheelbarrow, but the tire went flat. The dig is a cool sight, like seeing your yard with its pants down. The house sits at the lower elevation of a double lot, so, viewed from the house, the cut into the hillside is like a wide-screen projection of the geo-past. There's more top soil than I would have guessed, given how quickly I hit yellow sand/stone in my own backyard. Then there's the striations. Big history. I didn't see the outline of any washing machines, though.