By Kathryn Skelton,Staff Writer
After the cowboys and bulls go home, the front-end loader and dump trucks come out.

LEWISTON – Sunday morning at the Colisee, the rodeo was over. Two nights of fun. Crowds of 4,500 had ooohed and aaahhed at the powerful bulls and the riders’ daring-do.

Now it was time to get $8,000 worth of dirt the heck out of the building.

The Colisee floor took seven hours of major buffing after the monster truck rally last month.

This was more serious business: 10 inches of damp, clumpy dirt covered half the ice rink floor.

“There’s so much that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t realize,” said Roger Beaulieu. He spent half the morning behind the wheel of a dump truck, squeezing it in and out of the narrow space between the hockey boards only to be refilled again and again by a front-end loader in the middle of the arena.

It was his dirt the bulls had clomped over, the cowboys had fallen on. Beaulieu’d sat in the stands Friday night.

“It was top of the line, it was a good show. Terrible way to earn a living,” he said. “The dirt held up – they were happy.”

Beaulieu Industries in Lewiston started prepping the temporary floor three weeks ago.

It had to be just so. So much sand, so much loam, screened three times for rocks and sticks.

Six hundred and seven yards in all.

He said he’s done much bigger jobs before, but nothing quite of this sort. (There were a few glitches: his original 600-yard pile, ready back in January, got ruined by rain. Then his large 50-yard truck wouldn’t fit through the Colisee door.)

Beaulieu started the business he co-owns now with his son back in 1971. Still in high school, he lopped off the back of his father’s cattle truck, attached a dump body and put an ad in the paper. They sell loam, gravel and fill and excavate.

He loves the work.

“It’s cold, it’s hot, it’s muddy, it’s rainy, it’s what we do,” he said. “I am so dirty at the end of the day, sometimes when I stop to get coffee, people think I’m homeless. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

On Sunday, he, three workers and a cowboy ran the heavy machinery, wrangling the dirt into piles and dumping it on the edge of Colisee land. It’s being saved for future events.

Marcel Roy, of the arena’s maintenance staff, said the place will be spotless by the time the Androscoggin Business to Business trade show opens on Thursday.

Power brooms and a street sweeper were due in the building today.

“I figure by the end of tomorrow, Tuesday, you’ll never know there was a rodeo here,” Roy said.

Next up for Beaulieu: he’ll start work this week on Kennedy Park digging five drainage manholes for the new skate park. “That’s a dirty job,” he said.

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