Good habits are learned

Marge and I have been working on our garden, so in the process we have been using our hoes and shovels and garden trowels and such. After I use any one of the tools, I like to clean the metal and the wood and get it almost spotless. Not totally spotless but close. I also may need to sharpen the edge and bring back that new feeling.

As I was getting our hoes and shovels and trowels clean, I got to thinking back in the 1970s in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Most of my life, I worked around cattle and horses and really enjoyed it. But an opportunity came along to work for a general contractor out of Arthur, Nebraska. I started to work for Ted Frye Construction. Ted did about everything. He installed 32- or 36-foot cattle stock tanks out in the middle of nowhere in the Sandhills. Or Ted would build you a house from the ground up. Ted did the dirt work, concrete work, brick laying, electrical installation, everything, except finish the drywall. That was the only thing Ted hired out.

When I first started working for Ted there were three of us, including Ted himself. His other hired hand was Don Lemmert. Don was about the age of Ted, and I’m guessing maybe 60 or so. Ted was about 6 foot, 7 or 8 inches tall, and Don was maybe 5 foot, 4 or 5 inches tall. A normal hammer is 16 ounces, and a framing hammer is 22 ounces. Don used a 12-ounce hammer for everything. He was short and wiry and maybe weighed 130 lbs. or so. He was pretty blunt, and he wasn’t afraid to tell you what was what.

Don and I and Ted were doing dirt work not too long after I started working for Ted. Don and I were on the shovels, and Ted was running the backhoe. I picked up a shovel to use and accidentally got Don’s shovel. I guess I figured a shovel was a shovel. Not the case! Don’s shovel was special. Don kept his shovel sharp and clean. Don kept the handle clean as well with a real light touch of oil on it. There wasn’t even a hint of anything on the shovel.

The shovel I was using was kind of the opposite. There were spots on it where sometime in the past someone had failed to get all the concrete washed off. The edge was dull from use. The handle was wooden, and it was dry so a touch of oil would help. It didn’t take but a second or two before Don let me know I had his shovel. I didn’t think until that very moment that keeping one’s shovel clean was a big deal. It was. You can come up and check out our Rogue hoes, shovels, garden trowels, rakes and such, and they may not be perfect, but they are ready to use. Thanks Don.

Dad always had a few horses around, with some being colts. Dad liked horses, and I think he wanted Mick and me to grow up around them. Dad liked to work with the colts to gentle them down, not to abuse them, but to make them safer to be around. Dad had this special knot he tied when around horses. The knot wouldn’t slip, so there was no danger of choking the horse.

I’ve tied that same knot since I was little doing carpentry work or ranching or just life in general. Every year when we plant tomatoes we throw baling twine over an overhead wire in our high tunnels. We pull the baling twine down to about shoulder high and tie this same knot that Dad taught me to tie when I was really little. Then cut the twine off about ground level. We do this for every tomato we plant. So back when we were planting 550 tomatoes we tied this knot 550 times. This year maybe only 130 times. Thanks Dad.

Some of the simplest lessons in life if we utilize them may just last a life time as we use them.