is hard to find… it’s harder than a brick to find. Especially if it is a perfect brick you are trying to find. Perfection in a brick cannot be overrated. No perfection can. Yet, a brick of perfection will go unnoticed amidst all lesser bricks because nothing other than its equal is capable of knowing such perfection. Part of its imperfection is that an imperfect brick cannocomprehend the perfection of a perfect brick. Neither can a brick exist that is superior to a perfect brick.
Bricks created and destroyed number more than stars of heaven or sands of the sea and are

made of the same matter, shaped, forged, assembled, appreciated or not, worn and scattered, decayed and exchanged in turns. Structures rise and fall with the spheres above and the tides below, whether as frequent or not is irrelevant. Bricks and those who make them are numbered the same, as are the worlds and places they, shall we say, enhance.

The bricklayers who laid the bricks upon our house loved the bricks we chose. In his best English, one of the workers told me these bricks were very pretty, and though very tough, they were lightweight. This meant they could work with them very quickly, carry more of them at a time, stack them higher on the scaffolding. Our choice of this brick was purely aesthetic. It’s a rusty red brick splotched throughout with various shades of gray. Newcastle, I think, is part of the name of the brick, the type of brick, style, or whatever designation is used to specify bricks.
Twenty years living in this house has revealed another plus for these bricks, the bricks that keep giving. Their lightweight has proven less of a strain on our slab foundation. Neighboring houses tilt and settle making seams separate, drywalls crack, doors no longer open or close. Foundation repair is a growth business in these parts and is one of the few domestic necessities we have not required.
What I’m getting at is what the bricklayer told me. These bricks were the perfect bricks. Perfect for what? For our house? For the bricklayers to work? That’s how I took his meaning. The bricks were perfect for him to do his work. And they’ve turned out okay for our house, though I wish the craftsmanship of those who laid them would have been equal to the quality of the bricks they laid.
Here I must admit that when I think of ACME I think first of The Roadrunner and Coyote. I also think of Guy Noire holed up on the twelfth floor of the building that bears the name. One of my favorite lines in a movie is George Clooney’s character in “O Brother Where Art Thou” confessing to his host that he supposed it would be “the acme of foolishness to ask you had a hairnet?”  And Troy Aikman had a job before he was spokesman for ACME brick. Still, I associate his persona more with bricks than I do his previous job. One wonders of what bricks Mr. Aikman’s house is made. Doesn’t one?

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