HAYSTACK VIDEO 1
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Expectant readers. I trust you won't dismay
when I introduce this month's subject: shovels.
Given the quirks and caprices of the cosmos, the
Professor seems to be spending inordinately long
hours clutching the shaft of those earthy, practical
tools. Last week I even operated a mechanized
model, "the Ditch Witch," an exercise 1 found
comparable to dragging a rhinoceros in heat across
the Serengeti Plain by its tail. Shovels have haunted
my dreams and waking hours for several weeks.
I've begun to philosophize and mentally ramble
across shovel territory. I ask you, what would
become of the works of man without the shovel? A
sand shovel and bucket often number amongst our
earliest childhood toys. When ashes return to ashes
and dust to dust, a solemn shoveller consigns our
remains to the earth.
The shovellers themselves are often contemplative
souls, given to leaning on handles and reflecting
about the universe and its operations. "Alas, poor
Yorick," says Shakespeare's famous shovel
wielder, the grave-digger in Hamlet. Alas, indeed.
In a time gone by, outlaws were forced to dig their
own grave sites, ample time to reflect on life and
justice. Think of those diggers trenching the
Maginot Line or digging the moats of Medieval
Europe. What would history be without the shovel?
I think it deserves the same status as the wheel or the
inclined plane. Drive by any Oregon Department of
Transportation highway project. What do you see?
Armies of men leaning on shovel handles. Shovels
move the mountains of men's lives.
Shovels and shovelling find a place in
contemporary terminology and phrases: "He dug
himself into a hole." "Stay in school. Do you want
to grown up to be a ditch-digger?" "That cat really
dug the scene." (This phrase has become passe now
but was popular in recent memory.)
If you'll allow me, tolerant reader, I would like to
do a short bit of free-ranging regards shovels, their
qualities, and use—in short, my customary blather
and drivel. Excluding power shovels, excavators,
steam shovels, back-hoes and the like, the hand
shovel and its kin slices, chops, and lifts virtually
any mass imaginable. The common kitchen spatula,
for example, is a form of shovel. Blubber spades
used by early whalers for flensing strips of fat from a
whale carcass were also a shovel type. The Old
English word "scofl" and Frisian "skofel"were terms
for early digging instruments. The Dutch used a
"schoffel" or weeding hoe; the term "scuffle"
derives from that word.
Clam shovels, flat shovels, spear points,
trenching shovels, specialized telephone-pole digging
shovels of an earlier time (these had very long
handles—one shovel was for cutting the hole's
diameter, the other ladle-shaped one removed the
dirt), entrenching tools used by the military for
constructing trenches and ramparts and filling
endless sandbags, planting shovels, manure shovels,
snow shovels, and endless more. The mind fairly
reels at the scope of shovelness. Even the game
shuffleboard originated in early Britain as
"shovel board."
My friend Larry Dean Moore launched into a
complex dissertation on shovel technique and shovel
qualities one morning at a favorite surf break.
"One of the finest shovels ever made is the True
Temper "0" or "00" speed shovel. Professionals
favor those," he told me. "My landscaping buddy
had one with a stainless blade. That blade would
make you sing while you dug a ditch or moved soil.
You were that happy!"
I have never personally found elation or giddiness
after a day moving earth, but I have certainly
developed a stubborn, ox-like perseverance, a
personality trait not without its merits given the
rigours of modern living. Put simply, shovelling,
like the Marines, builds character. For you young
bucks out there who want to become characters, I
recommend a few hours behind a shovel.
I've heard tell that Scotsmen walked around on all
fours until they were introduced to the shovel. The
truth is elusive.
A closed mouth gathers no feet -John Buckley
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Third Annual Spartina Art Exhibit
NOW OPEN AT THEIR NEW LOCATION
The Spiirtina Art Show continues through Libor Day at the
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art was hand-made, incorporates the spartina plant, and is for
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