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Editorial
| | On Manual Labor
-- by
Kevin Walsh |  Hard Work is Hard
I started my career as a member of the American Workforce
many years ago as unskilled labor, first busing tables, then
digging swimming pools. At the age of seventeen, I seemed to
have an inexhaustible supply of energy, and the naivete that
allowed me to rent it out to unscrupulous jerks for $1.65 and
hour. Nowadays, engaged in the honorable trade of typing for
a living, my hands are as soft and uncalloused as the pink
belly of a six week old puppy, and my levels of energy are
alarmingly low. It is in this state that I embarked upon
the task of constructing a small rowing dinghy for stress relief
and pleasure, oblivious to the fact that constructing
such a craft entails a distressing amount of manual labor.
And so it is that I am drenched in sweat with muscles
quivering at the end of each evening, having spent several
hours lifting nails and placing ill-conceived gouges in
precious, rain-forest denuding planks of lumber. I haven't
decided if I enjoy the mindless repetition of sanding, the
rasp, rasp, rasp of which lulls you into a drone-like state
of mechanical movement that, upon the return of cognitive
awareness leads to the discovery of a nice, dipping curve
in a plank God intended to be ruler-straight.
I've also discovered a startling lack of skill in producing
any cut, plane, bevel or dado that exhibits even the slightest
modicum of fairness. Mating two boards requires that I obtain
planks two inches wider than my target width because the
alternating removal of wood from first one end of the board then the
other in a fruitless attempt to eliminate the sliver of daylight
to be seen when the two are butted togehter inevitably creeps
past the pencil line denoting the point of no return.
All I can do is my best, but I fear that my best breast-stroke
will ultimately prove a more crucial skill.
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