Showerthought: A talk with my grandpa about his old post hole digger

I was helping my grandpa clean out his garage in Boise last weekend and we found his old manual post hole digger, the kind with two handles. He said, 'We used to call this the arm breaker. Took us three days to put in a hundred feet of fence.' I've been running a gas-powered auger for so long I forgot what that was like. It made me think about how much easier the job is now, but also how you lose that feel for the ground. With the machine, you just push through; with the digger, you knew every rock and root by hand. I wonder if that made them better at picking spots. Anyone over 50 have stories about switching from manual to power tools?

3 comments

3 Comments

ben_nguyen9d ago

My uncle said the worst part wasn't the digging, it was the waiting. You'd hit a rock and have to stop, go get a pry bar, maybe a drink of water. That dead time made you look at the line you were setting, see if it was straight. Now you just blast through and check later. Those pauses forced a kind of quality control you don't get back.

blair_dixon9d ago

Remember when you could tell a good carpenter by the sound of their hammer? My dad used to say he could hear a missed nail from across the yard. Now with nail guns, it's just a quick buzz and done. Faster for sure, but you never get that same rhythm, that tap-tap-tap set before the final swing. I guess some things you just trade speed for a kind of... knowing.

lindamartin9d ago

Ever think we lost something real when we stopped using basic tools? I used to roll my eyes at my grandpa's old stories about hand tools, but @blair_dixon is right. That rhythm told you everything about the person working. A nail gun gets it done, but it's just noise. You can't hear the skill anymore.