Manual Drive

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My father worked with his hands. Once upon a time, we all did.

Buddy introduced me to manual labor when I was 7. He handed me a screwdriver, a simple Phillips head with a translucent yellow plastic handle, and said, "Here, hold this." By then, he lived in a trailer park at the top of a hill and drove a mustard-colored Datsun two-door, as inexpensive a car as he could find, always musty with the smell of unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes.

My father had been a car mechanic most of his life, a pit mechanic at the local Chevrolet dealer, but he didn’t particularly like cars. Automobiles were simply a way to get places, a tool for travel.

Something was rattling on his old Datsun. I don’t remember what it was, maybe the door, but the repair involved my using the screwdriver to hold one part tight while he tightened a second part with a wrench. It is not just my poor memory that keeps me from being more specific. My father never bothered to explain. Just an abrupt, "Hold this, and don’t let it move."

Of course, the screwdriver slipped out of its socket the minute Buddy started wrenching the adjoining metal part. I have no doubt that this was to a large extent my fault. I was bored, looking at the neighbor’s trailer, trying for a glimpse of the neighbor’s teenage daughter.

"Jesus," my father said in response. "Gimme that."

He took the tool in his left hand, bent his long, strong back awkwardly, stretched his arms to cover the distance between the screwdriver and his wrench, and completed the job.

Lately, I’ve made it a practice to look at people’s hands. Try this if you are at a lecture and you are bored. Look deliberately at the speaker’s hands. Or next time you are in a restaurant, a cafeteria, stare across the sea of tables.

Hands are vigorous. Animated. Unpredictable.

Most of us sit all day, or stand stiffly. We expend great energy holding most of our limbs rigidly in place. We have constructed modern lives that demand a firm posture in front of a screen, behind a desk, in queues. Our necks ache, our shoulders tense, we brace ourselves. It is expected of us.

Watch the men and women who are condemned to wear business suits, and it is easy to imagine that the smooth gray fabric is woven with steel. We notice someone with an animated face because animated faces are becoming rare. Keeping an even expression is valued in business, in most leadership positions. We stand stiffly in our suits, mask our feelings, and climb to the top. Examine the men and women in our executive ranks, corporate or political. Who do you see? Al Gore and Madeleine Albright? Or Carol Burnett and Zero Mostel?

But our hands still talk.

Watch sometimes. Our hands play hopscotch on the tabletop, caress the podium, slice the air, as if they have a life, a rhythm of their own.

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