Why we like hand tools/Origin story

 Hi all,

I like working with hand tools.  Something about using an old fashioned, wood handled implement makes me connect to the job I'm doing, the world and my situation better.  I learned most of these skills from my father, who recently passed, but I share my love of using these tools with a friend of mine, who sees similar utility and generally tolerates my shenanigans with axes, knives, scythes, woodsman's pals and the like.  

There's always a fast, loud, and garish way to do things.  I have those sorts of tools too - the leaf blowers, weedwhackers, chainsaws and other things that make noise and can usually get the job done faster.  But I always prefer the things that are silent or quiet, where I can work with my friends or family and do things carefully.  

Sometimes I need to do something fast, so I keep those things handy - but for when I need to use my muscles, feel accomplished and avoid a gym visit, I split wood by hand, or cut some hay with my scythe, or limb a tree with an axe.  This grounds me, exhausts me, and makes me feel like I'm making my dad proud.  When I swing my father's sledgehammer or maul, or cut hay with a scythe I've sharpened as he taught me, I am, just a little bit, connected to the wisdom he shared.  

One of my funniest moments as a fledgling chicken tender was when a bobcat was after a hen.  She flew into a tree and he was circling while I was doing dishes at my kitchen sink.  I was shirtless, as it was summer and HOT, and the only thing I could see on my way out to face this bobcat was a half-length handle sledgehammer I'd been using to put in garden stakes.  So I ran at the bobcat, screaming like a maniac, wielding the sledge and thinking I was Thor, god of chicken protectors.  The bobcat wheeled, sped off and I was happy in the knowledge that I'd saved my hen.  

But this story is much older than that.  This story begins with parents that gave me small red snowshovels, small bamboo rakes, and work gloves as gifts.  It begins with a father who showed me to use an axe, a scythe, a rake and hoe and shovel, to mold the land and tame the plants around me.  It began with a young boy, nicknamed ember, who marveled at my father (Sparky) hammering and welding metal into new shapes, repairing things that most said were trash, and splitting oak and maple logs with one swing of his maul.  I wanted to be the man in those young boy's pictures of his father - a great, strapping man who was as inimitable as he was intelligent.  

I still want to be my father, in many respects, when I grow up.  Maybe, in my mind, someday I'll live up to his legacy.  Until then, I'm going to put handles on axes, find broken tools at the dump and resurrect them, and try to find the time to do things by hand whenever I can.