Manual Drive

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Chiefly the mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands. 

—Francis Bacon

Frustration is a powerful tool.

In my new backyard, a lilac bush was crumbling the back wall of my garage, the roots swelling large, shouldering emphatically into the old red brick. The rear wall, partially below ground, had begun to crack, was bowing in at the center, threatening to fall, and if that wall shattered, so would the side walls, dropping the rafters, collapsing the roof. It would be a poor homeowner indeed who stood by for such calamity.

The lilac was easily six feet tall, four feet across at its widest point. One neighbor offered a chain saw, but the problem was roots, not branches. Another neighbor suggested that I rent a stump grinder, a menacing machine that grates wood into pulp. There are six tree removal companies listed in my local phone book. I called the three nearest to me for estimates. None returned my call; help is hard to come by in these years of high employment.

My tool chest is meager; my even having a tool chest is a recent development. Unlike many of my neighbors, I don’t tinker on weekends for relaxation. A broken faucet, a leaking roof, a squeaking board don’t motivate me. Instead they make me feel powerless, stupid, inadequate. If you can divide homeowners into two camps, I’m in the camp that spends weekends on the phone, anxiously trying to find an honest handyman.

One August Sunday morning, equipped with nothing more than a dull, rusty hatchet, I went at the lilac with all my captive feelings of inadequacy. For three hours, I hacked in anger, chopped through gray soil, sliced across small tendrils of root, searching for the root ball, the plant’s anchor. Sweat ran thick; my shirt grew sodden, and I threw it aside. I rubbed my eyes with soil-covered hands until my face darkened. The back of my neck burned from the sun. Thirty minutes into the job, my arm ached, and I would have stopped, but my hands urged me on. My hands loved this work, loved the feel of the wooden handle, the blunt impact each time the hatchet found root. They loved the reassuring repetition, the clear sense of purpose.

I had no real plan, but by then my hands had taken over my thinking: Grip the hatchet, swing away. Go until something happens.

No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

—James Russell Lowell

My father had particularly large hands. Oil often was pounded into his palms, his fingers, filling every crease and fold. Buddy, as he was called, would scrub with Lava soap, but the oil wouldn’t give. His hands were covered with scars, healing cuts, freshly blackened nails. The cuts––gashes, really––were of the sort and size that would send me, and most likely you as well, to the emergency room for stitches; for Buddy, they were commonplace.

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