I stopped halfway through my sidewalk singing and snow relocation efforts Saturday morning and leaned on my shovel to survey my work — especially interested in whether I’d kept a straight line from the front steps to the street. Not bad, I mused, but not as good as grandpa.
Truth is, I can’t lay my hands on a shovel of any sort without thinking of grandpa Matt.
These days, mass-produced shovels are readily available, relatively inexpensive and, for the most part, disposable after several years. Which is to say, when they rust or the handle breaks, they’re thrown away.
Not so with grandpa. A shovel wasn’t a tool you drove to your nearest garden center or home improvement mega-store and brought home to remove snow, dig up a shrub, or plant a few tomato plants.
A shovel was, for him — a miner from the age of 12 whose pay depended on the amount of coal he dug on any given day — a tool crucial to his survival. This was true not only as digger below ground, but above as well, since each summer when the mines were down, he planted a garden for fresh vegetables to eat and can for the winter. Not to mention pick up extra income digging graves, basements, footings, and water and gas line trenches as well as hauling dirt and rock in his pickup.
Which is to say, I learned very early on that there was a proper shovel for every job, a most efficient way to use it, and a correct way to clean it up and store it when the job was finished. Putting a shovel — or any other tool for that matter — away with dirt still clinging to its blade was unthinkable.
Speaking of valuing shovels, there’s a shovel museum located on the campus of Stonehill College in Easton Massachusetts. The collection boasts 755 shovels from the Ames manufacturing companies. By the 1870s Ames was the largest shovel manufacturer in the world, making three-fifths of the world’s shovels. Ames shovels literally built America.
Among my most valued heirlooms are a grouping of grandpa’s tools, his pitted steel coal shovel — with its well-worn, wide front edge, flat center, sharply curved sides, and sloping neck — the most prized among them. I never had the chance to see him use it — or companion sharp-pointed axe — but I heard lots of stories about his prowess from other miners.
Above ground, though, he schooled me the artful method of working soil from the earth and throwing scoops of dirt or rock to and from the bed of his pickup.
When digging gas lines or descending to a leaking water main, his shovel of choice was a steel “sharpshooter” that sported a gently curved blade 18 inches long and 5 inches wide attached to a straight wooden handle with a closed steel grip at the end. He also used the sharp blade like an axe for chopping through roots.
He was something to watch; no wasted motion — had a methodical rhythm all his own. Most times he sang as he dug as well — either little ditties he made up himself or old tunes like “Springtime In The Rockies.”
From time to time, as I got older, he would instruct me in the art of shoveling: “J.T., when you use a spade, hold the handle away from you as you drive the blade straight down with your foot,” he demonstrated after watching me break ground for my first of many March potato plantings. “That way you can use your arms to pull the handle back and break the ground free. Then don’t forget to bend you knees and use your legs with your arms to lift the dirt out of the ground. Otherwise you’ll hurt your back.”
I never knew grandpa to own a snow shovel; always used the enormous, steel scoop shovel ever present in the back of his pickup. I have a similar version I use to dig out of my driveway and clean off my steps and walk. It’s not the same as using grandpa Matt’s but I do know how to use it without hurting my back. Not to mention sing while I work.
J.T. Knoll is a writer, speaker and prevention and wellness coordinator at Pittsburg State University. He also operates Knoll Training, Consulting & Counseling Services in Pittsburg. He can be reached at 231-0499 or jtknoll@swbell.net
