A letter from Papaw — Wednesday morning. Coffee's still hot.

Read in the paper they're widening the road into town. Two lanes to four. Going to take a year and a half they say, which means three.

I'm going to say something plain, and I'm only going to say it the once.

A job ain't the doing. A job is the doing plus the cleaning up. Half the work I did at the mill for forty-some years was sweeping up after the work I'd just done. Wendell used to gripe about it. I never minded it. The sweeping is when you find out if you did the first part right.

They'll cut the trees and lay the asphalt and somebody'll cut a ribbon. Then they'll go home. The dirt they pushed up to the shoulder will sit there ten years before anything green takes it back, and the runoff will find my back fence the way water finds anything, and the kudzu'll thank them for the sunlight.

Ruth's bird feeder is empty. I forgot to fill it Monday. The deer come up to the tree line at dusk anyway, but the birds count on a man.

Here's the thing. The men who built this ridge road in '52 are mostly gone. Whoever finishes the wide one won't drive it long either. What lasts is whether somebody came back the next morning and picked up after themselves. I'm going to go fill the feeder.

Love,