Hammers and Hoes

 

Mitch Robbins: Danny was embarrassed to tell the class what my job is.

Barbara Robbins: They’re nine. They get excited about the guy who gives them change at the arcade. You just happen to have one of those jobs that’s difficult to…

Mitch Robbins: …believe that a grown man does without losing his mind. I mean, what is my job? I mean, I sell advertising time on the radio. So basically, I sell air. At least my father was an upholsterer, he made a sofa or a couch, you sit on, it was something tangible. What can I point to? Where’s my work? It’s air!

~City Slickers

I’ve decided that I like physical labor. Swinging the pick axe until I’m panting hard and my shoulders ache. Shoveling dirt until sweat drips from my face and stings my eyes. Ripping up sod in the cool morning air. Attacking militant weeds, edging an unruly lawn, re-staining a weather-faded fence, and fixing non-functioning fixtures. I really don’t mind doing any of it. In fact, I quite enjoy it. It’s an expedient to a good tired. The kind you feel after a hard workout or a long day on the trail. You’re dirty, smelly, and sore. But you feel content. Like you’ve done something nurturing for your soul. Something innate and essential even. It’s the yin to the more sedate and intellectual yang of my every day existence.  

I’ve also gained an appreciation for the implements used in the manual arts. The arsenal of hand tools that are the handyman’s stock in trade. The various devices used by indomitable, brown-skinned landscapers wearing lime green shirts. Leaf blowers, lawn mowers, chain saws, and other gasoline-powered contraptions designed to make big chores less big chores. I never really paid much attention to these rather ordinary objects until I thought about the bigger work picture.

But that has changed. I now get enthused about visiting the hardware store. I find myself roaming the aisles of Lowe’s looking lovingly at loppers and handling hammers and hoes. I pick up pick axes to see if their heft is adequate for some imaginary job. I inspect the quality of different shovels, carefully weighing the benefits of a round-scooped shovel over a more angular design while also contemplating a fiberglass handle over wood. I assess the durability of Macleods, pulaskis, pitch forks, spades, tampers, hand saws, hatchets, trowels, and hedge shears. I mentally rank-order brands from best to worst and from most to least costly. 

I don’t mean to suggest I’m some sort of Hank Hill. I don’t have a vast collection of neatly arranged tools hanging from shiny hooks inside a speckless garage. Truth be told, I’m a bit inept when it comes to working with my hands. I inherited that from my maladroit father who couldn’t hammer a nail without smashing his thumb and causing a blue-black blood-blister that would take weeks to heal. So I never really learned how to do “manly” projects. I’ve had to adopt YouTube as a surrogate paternal figure when it comes to tasks like running irrigation lines or changing out a headlamp. That is all to say that I’m not a tool geek at heart. I don’t covet blue collar gadgets and gizmos to attain status among the neighborhood dads. The instruments by which manual labor is performed are of ancillary interest to me. It’s the work that they facilitate that holds my interest. Because the tools are the means to an end that I seldomly get to see given my chosen vocation.

I’m a white-collar worker with pale skin and soft hands. Always have been. That too is something passed down to me from my father. I usually dress for work in the uniform of a contemporary, post-pandemic professional: relaxed-fit trousers designed for aging men with a slight paunch, a short-sleeved bowling or Hawaiian shirt, and Clarks Oxfords. My office is an actual office. It is decorated with all sorts of self-congratulatory items intended to signal how important I am. Various degrees and certificates, tastefully framed in black and gold, adorn my walls. An enormous flat-screen television hangs opposite my large, U-shaped desk. A new charcoal-hued couch, brought in to fill space in my cavernous space, sits on a blue-gray area rug in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that allow the outside world in without actually allowing it in. When the temperatures are scorching like they often are in the summers here, I’m ensconced in my 70-degree, climate-controlled corner cocoon, comfortably immune from the unpleasantness outside. 

My work is challenging but certainly not physically demanding. It’s all mind work. I sit all day in an ergonomically-designed chair tapping out emails, talking on the telephone, reviewing and drafting documents, performing research, arguing with overly-zealous regulators, solving problems, and devising strategies to minimize and mitigate risk. The tools of my trade are the mouse, keyboard, telephone, pen, legal pad, software applications, and the cloud. My brain is my hands.

When quitting time arrives, many folks are able to see the fruits of their daily labor. A medical doctor might point to a tumor removed or a broken bone cast. Dentists can show you cavities filled and molars extracted as visible proof that they actually accomplished something between the hours of 8 and 5. Architects and engineers can present a set of drawings or plans they have produced. The results of their efforts are concrete and measurable. 

Not so with me. As Mitch Robbins lamented in the movie City Slickers, “What can I point to? Where’s my work? It’s air!” I really don’t produce anything that can be touched, seen, heard, or tasted. My work-product comprises conversations, advice, strategy, structure, thoughts, and recommendations. Oh sure, I generate letters, memoranda, policies, procedures, guidelines, bulletins, briefs, and other papers populated with words strung together into a cogent and readable format. But that’s very different than watching a tree fall to the axe. Or seeing water swirling down an unclogged drain. The return on my toil is more abstract. 

That is the allure of physical work. The type of labor we dismissively refer to as “blue collar” or “unskilled.” The unworthy occupations we want our kids to avoid doing mostly for the sake of vanity and pride. The vocational jobs that the John Benders of the world are destined to perform. That type of work, done with hands, instantaneously produces results that can be sensed by the senses. There is a gratifying immediacy to it that validates the effort. At the end of a day, you know a carpenter has been on the job because you can see the evidence. Or, in the case of Mitch Robbins’s character, you could tell his dad was hard at it all day because you could physically sit and watch football on the upholstered sofa he made. 

There is something compelling about that. Perhaps it’s a residual satisfaction from the genetic past when the ability to build shelter, skin animals, and start fire was imperative to survival. Or maybe it’s just that at our core, we are primarily visual beings that need to see in order to believe. Whatever the cause, I get a certain satisfaction from digging post holes, repairing eroded trails, ripping up flooring, and repainting the bathroom. It’s both good therapy and a counter-balance to my professional every-day routine. Beyond keeping me youngish, I’m rewarded with something that I don’t ordinarily receive sitting behind a desk: immediate, transformative results. I get to view the hole I have dug, the trail bed that has been restored, the naked floor, and the new paint on the wall. Even before the task is complete, I can watch the results take life like a gradually-inflating jolly-jumper. And when the work is done, I am rewarded with something tangible to justify all of the lost blood, sweat, and blood. I can point to what I have done and know with certainly that the result of my efforts is more than just air.