During WW2 the moving of Stonehenge to coordinate it for Daylight time was suspended and didn't resume until 1952 at which time it was a semi yearly circus and went well over the allotted hour.
In 1960 it took almost two months to complete what was supposed to be done in an hour or less. Winston Churchill spoke out. He recalled the roughnecks of Sherwood Forest and suggested handing the job off to an American outfit. The suggestion was ignored and the annual circus parade at Stonehenge continued every six months.
In 2009 someone recalled Sir Winston's suggestion and then Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Hillary Clinton with his plan on hiring a team of American rednecks to do the job.
Clinton passed the request to several Ivy League run engineering companies and reported to Prime Minister Brown that she had 'Top Men' working on it and explained that she had given the planning job to the 'best and brightest' the country had.
Icily Brown explained to Hillary that that is exactly what he was not looking for and told his people to comb through the list of long time UK expats living in the States. Several were visited and nothing seemed to pan out until they met an expat named Brian Wentworth.
When they arrived at the Wentworth place they found him moving a 15 ton freshly cut oak tree across his yard using a homemade skidder he had built for $3.64 and parts he had scrounged. Wentworth had 'gone redneck' and was extremely self-sufficient. When he needed an expensive piece of equipment he simply hopped into his pickup and went to the dump, scrounged parts and made his own. He showed them his tractor, a rugged looking behemoth and proudly boasted, "I got about eight bucks into it."
The pair of British engineers stared at each other agape. They knew they had found their man and explained the job to him and proposed he put together a team of like minded practical engineers to tackle the project. He agreed, explaining it would take time. He also requested expense money up front and a check was immediately handed to him. They told him to take all the time he needed.
Two days later he embarked on a 57,000 mile almost 4 year road trip through 49 states, meeting people and hiring them for his standby list. He was particular. Anyone that had set foot in a college classroom was instantly rejected except for a guy named Larry DuBois, a Cajun who had been thrown out of college on his first day. People with high school diplomas were scrutinized carefully. Many were rejected.
Later when President Obama found out about this and heard what was going on he was mortified to hear that their offer of 'Top Men' had been rejected and a group of hillbillies hired by a British expat turned American redneck was going to take the job.
In 2013 I got roped into the team out of the clear blue. I was at work in the 'Nawlins area and happened to be on an oil dock interpreting a 3 way conversation between a Cajun, an Aroostock county, Maine potato farmer turned sailor and a Chicano as I have a pretty good fluency in American dialects. An executive from the oil company was there on a random visit and overheard me. He said told me he had a distant cousin involved in an interesting project and suggested I might make a good 'terp. I walked off and forgot about it.
I thought nothing of it and went back to the boat. A couple days later I got a call from the office telling me there would be people at the office waiting to talk to me when I got off my tour. They asked me what it was all about and I said I didn't have a clue.
When I got off work and returned to the office to check out I was met by Brian Wentworth and asked a few questions. Then a man with him said in an okra and gumbo deep Cajun accent "Joel's uncla sezs he OK.," and I was told I was hired on the spot. Hired for what? Move Stonehenge 30 degrees of arc? Yeah, right. I started looking for the ghost of Alan Funt to see if I was on 'Candid Camera'.
The whole thing made no sense to me so I simply went home and forgot about it. I had no plans of going anywhere.
A few months later I was underway from Paulsboro, New Jersey to Chelsea, Massachusetts with 80,000 barrels of Jet to be pipe lined to Logan International. I was awakened by my mate and told that I was being taken off the boat by helicopter to go somewhere. I instantly called the office and was told that ''The Government' is looking for you. Something abut the State Department. Don't worry. You'll get paid for your time and I'll call your wife and tell her you're working over." Before I could pour a cup of coffee a Coast Guard helicopter was overhead. I hopped into the rescue basket and got hauled up and flown directly to Dover AFB where I was given a quick physical, a pressure suit and stuffed into the backseat of some sort of interceptor after a briefing consisting of 'Don't touch the red handle'.
We made three in-flight refuelings which scared the daylights out of me because the hotshot pilot had to slow down to damned near stall speed.
When we made landfall over England we went subsonic so as not to rattle the windows of the western part of England and landed in a NATO base there. I wanted a cup of coffee and said so. I was told I'd get one when I got where we were going as I was herded into an Air Force Medivac chopper and taken to none other than Stonehenge.
We landed nearby and someone in a Land Rover took me to the jobsite where I went into a trailer. In it was a very surprised Brian Wentworth who asked me what I was doing there. I wasn't expected for two days...if at all.
When I finished telling Wentworth what had happened and that I had not taken so much as a drop of water since I had turned in the night before at sea. Wentworth took me to the cookhouse and we had bangers and mash along with pretty good coffee. The cookhouse was amazing. The cook (I dared not call him a chef or he would have gotten as mad as a wet hornet) could cook anything.
The following day I got to watch our British cousins try biscuits and gravy for the first time. They looked at it dubiously at first and tried a small bite followed by a shovelful and to a man wide eyed said, "It's GOOD!"
I asked for Norwegian fisherman's cod breakfast and the cook did an excellent job. It's cod, fried potatoes, crushed bacon, covered with bacon grease and chopped onion and I like it once in a while. The cook also made a sushi for the couple of Asian rednecks. Black rednecks were impressed with his soul food.
Over dinner he told me he had asked the State Department to locate me. He had a First Class ticket waiting for me in two days and I was to be accompanied by another guy to brief me on what was expected.
Instead I had been pretty much kidnapped by the State Department, taken to a foreign country with nothing but the clothes on my back, a pair of Topsiders, ratty, smelly khaki pants, a torn T-shirt and a wallet containing $22, a driver's license and no passport. I had spent four hours in a cramped cockpit being blasted across the Atlantic by a hotshot flyboy hell bent on killing both of us and unceremoniously been dumped at a labor camp.
I mentioned needing clothes and Wentworth mentioned a British equivalent of a Goodwill store nearby. As for a place to sleep, I grabbed an empty bunk in one of the trailers and met my bunkmates. As a professional mariner I knew the drill.
The next day I asked what to do about the CPAP I had left behind and one of the Brits spoke up and got me hooked up. I was fortunate to have remembered my settings so I was good to go for the following night. I'm sure my bunkmates were pleased to see that happen.
I was also offered a quick shopping trip and told my driver to take me to the second hand place. It was like a Super Goodwill and very well organized. I was still annoyed at the world and that I admit was unfair. In the store the usual men's, women's and children's sections were labeled and I noticed another section labeled 'costumes'. I made a beeline for that figuring that if I was in the middle of a redneck circus I might just as well look like a clown. There happened to be a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit there and I snagged it along with a pair of coveralls. I was good to go.
I showed up back on the job wearing the suit much to the amusement of the British overseers. The rest of the crew loved it and after work they figured out a way to get to the store and they pretty much cleaned out the costume department. Ove the next few day the entire job looked like a huge costume party.
The main part of the prep work was done but there was still a lot of 'pickup' work so the crew kept busy.
One of the overseers casually asked me that he had not gotten to see the blueprints. "These guys? I doubt they have any. These guys are probably making it up as they go along." He turned ashen.
When we returned, Wentworth happened on by and overheard me.
A Brit had been heard a Maine potato farmer with a thick Aroostook County Maine accent comment "I hope these Limey's don't expect me to drink that warm $hit they serve here. They better have COLD Bud lite." The Brit asked me what the potato farmer had said.
I replied, "He said I hope the Bud Lite beer is cold when we get to party when we move these stones."
(This 2023 trip, following the Bud Lite controversy the crew voted to change to Coors Lite almost unanimously. I was the only dissenter. I voted for Guinness. I like Guinness. Besides, unanimous elections sound like rigged elections forced at gunpoint.)
Wentworth later asked me why I didn't translate what was said word for word. I replied "Because those are the guys that are paying us. I didn't want to piss them off."
He said, "You got a point there. You just earned your pay," and wandered off.
All day a Brit would ask me "What did that man say?" I'd translate for him. Some of them marveled at my ability to understand the different accents and terminology but the truth is, any long time sailor can do what I was doing because we work with all kind of people.
Anyway, the proof of the pudding was in the eating and the time was coming up. That year we had to move the entire thing between 0100 and 0200 UTC and have it perfect.
The entire crew was busy the night before. You could see them cutting steel, rigging and rerigging and about 2350 UTC we declared it good to go. At the stroke of 000001 UTC the movement began and it went flawlessly. It took the crew until 0037 UTC before we turned the job over to the Brits to check our work. They were stunned and good to their word, they broke out the beer and we celebrated. We were accurate to .01 of a second of arc!
I never did find out what materials were used but I later heard that it was miles of baling wire, tons of scrap steel, 87 diesel engines, the obligatory 2x4 stud and 19 miles of 550 paracord but we got it done.
In addition to that a full pickup load of Copenhagen snoose cans were policed up afterwards.
I wore the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit home and my wife screeched when I walked in. When she recovered she laughed herself silly and shook her head. It did look ridiculous.
I'm finishing this as we head into JFK and we're landing soon. I have an hour's connection time and catch my final leg home.
If this story ain't 100% true it ought to be. I had one hell of a time making it up and if you believe as gospel I ain't can do nothin' for you.
By early 2014 the team was assembled, and needed only the word to proceed.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
