By Chip Brown | Maynardville@gmail.com

This week I came to the building site with my dad. All the workers were gone and I just wanted to walk around and get the feel for its size. Sometimes when the work is going on it is hard to stand in one place. There is always some person carrying steel or a dozer to dodge. Often the dozers just distract my attention. This week I decided to just go by and stand around.

As I stood there  I noticed a car out on the highway stop. Out of this car came a man and what I assumed to be his young daughter. They stood there next to the old white house looking at the site. The little girl was probably about five and the father pointed across the landscape. No doubt he was telling her that her school would be here. Probably he pointed out where she would play, where she might get off the bus or where she may have a classroom. The little girl seemed truly interested.

I wonder just how many people stop by there each day. I hope it is many because this is a truly historic undertaking.

I was going to write an article this week about the brick being delivered to the site. I wanted to write a little something about what is holding those walls up while it is being built. Seems there was a gentleman at Hardees that morning wondering that. I really like to listen to people and hear their questions. This allows me to write about what others want and not just what I find interesting. I'll cover those two topics in a moment.

But I thought about just what this young girl might be wondering about. I guess as adults we wonder the most about security and cost. But what are the kids wondering about?

While I try very hard each year not to grow up as I grow old sometimes the simpleness of youth escapes me. I remember as a child there was a subdivision being built right behind my dad's property. I used to watch the dozers there too. I decided to get a shovel and do some digging of my own. I spent most of the summer between my fourth and fifth grade years digging in this hole. All the time my mother reminded me that she was going to make me fill it back in. Today kids have DS and WII and PSP. In my summers we had books and this summer I had my hole. It was refreshing to see this young lady looking at the site without the DS in her hand.

For some reason that summer came back to me while I watched the man and daughter. I thought how much more productive I would have been if I had that trackhoe. But I also began to reflect on why I had dug that hole. My mother asked me each morning how my hole to China was going. Maybe I expected that if I dug deep enough I would pop out of the ground in Hong Kong. I knew better, Leah Wolfe had already taught me about the molten core of the earth in third grade.

But what if I were a child again? What if I stood in the middle of this property and started digging? If we could dig a hole straight down from the new Paulette School where would we come out?

I took my photos and wrote some notes, but the drive home found my mind wandering about the hole to China again. I had to know! Where would I come out if I jumped in that trackhoe and just kept digging? What is on the polar opposite side of the earth from Paulette Elementary?

The global coordinates of Paulette Elementary are approximately 36.15 X 83.91. I entered these into an Antipode Map on the net. An antipode map takes your location and calculates the polar opposite location on the globe. It involves a bunch of trig and algebra that I am pretty sure I got an "A" in but don't remember. Fortunately this map server does it for me.

It seems if we dug straight down from Paulette Elementary we would flood Union County with salt water. We would emerge off the western coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean (Figure 2). We would be almost due west of Coral Bay Australia  almost exactly between Australia and a small island called Isle St. Paul. I wonder how many kids will go to school there knowing that beneath their feet whales are swimming around? I wonder how many Union Countians would have me declared nuts if I told them that?

But to answer Mr. Collin's question, the walls are held up by jacks (Figure 1). The pole of the jack stands inside the structure and reach through the blocks where they are anchored on the outside (Figure 3).

This week much more of the walls have gone in. A small area was made for what I am told will be the heat and air section of the school.

Also conduit has been run from the top of the block to the bottom to carry all of the wires necessary for a modern school. A good deal of the mechanics of this school will be carried overhead. Above the school will be an area where most of the maintenance work can be carried out. It will be big enough to walk in. A lot of the maintenance issues may be carried out during the day without interrupting class. This will include changing filters, light bulbs etc.

General Shale delived the brick this week as well as some decorative block. I am told that brick work is getting ready to start. Fasteners have been inlayed into the structural block to hold the brick securely to the structure. These ties are made of metal and while one end is fastened into the block the other will be fastened to the brick. Also within this wall will be a moisture barrier. A moisture barrier is a fabric that negates the temperature changes from within versus outside the building. This will stop a lot of the moisture issues other Union County schools endure daily.

The building continues on the site, and progress is being made. One only has to look at the site as you drive by. Or pull in one of the drives on a late Saturday afternoon and show it to your kids. Be sure to point out that while we are building a school...Assure your kids that we aren't bothering any of the whales that swim beneath it.