Our house came with a grizzled old basketball hoop anchored next to our driveway. It was one of our least favorite amenities, and disuse had made it an eyesore. Our front yard is shaded for most of the morning and, combined with the typical humidity in our area, is an excellent hosting ground for all varieties of lichens and moss. Generally, I approve of these fluffy-looking additions to our landscape because they add so much color and variety, but it just isn't prudent to allow vegetation to grow on one's basketball hoop. It not only causes the neighbors concern over their property values, it also advertises one's lack of skillz with the rock.
Not long after we moved in, The Husband and I took down the lichen encrusted backboard and hoop, and stored it in the garage thinking that we would post it on craigslist. You never know what hipster might need a green basketball goal for their art school final project illustrating the political ramifications of tourism in Holland - ironically. Yeah, I don't really get art. Said basketball goal is still in our garage, next to a working washer and dryer we also intend(ed) to list.
Removing the goal left a lonesome square steel post jutting eight feet skywards from our yard. And thus it has been for the last year. Until now.
The torrential rain of the previous weekend softened the clay mud around the concrete piling enough for The Husband to dig out most of the post. Then the testosterone kicked in. Testosterone+Pickup Truck = Great Idea! Using his brand-new, self-retracting tie-down strap, The Husband hooked the steel post to the back of the truck and used some hemi-power to pull it out of the earth. As the clay relinquished its hold on the concrete piling it released a big sloppy wet slurp of resignation. Sadly, we can now no longer have Maypole dances in our yard.
We filled in the gaping hole with sand and topsoil and the large chunks of grass uprooted by the testosterone and hemi-power rippling so closely nearby. Then we realized that we couldn't lift the post to move it out of sight. Not even a budge. The basketball goal lives on! Toppled, and humiliated by the brazen display of its concrete nether-regions, it is still in our yard. I don't know which offends the neighbors more, our willful determination that a moss covered basketball hoop is art, or our willful defiance of social mores by allowing our basketball post to lay outside, naked, for all the world to see.
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