How to use a shovel

By Bobby Neal Winters

My dad could use a shovel, and he taught me how to use one too.  He’d started work in the oilfield when he was a boy, when they were first starting oilfield production in Oklahoma. They used horses and mules before trucks and bulldozers came in.

Dad and his twin brother Dave worked as a pair.  A man with an ax chopped down the brush; Dad and Dave dragged it away.  They were still boys and hadn’t yet worked their way up the ladder to be allowed to use an ax.  

There is a hierarchy.

Once the brush is cleared, you start digging ditches.  You breach the ground and dig down.  Once you are deep enough, you need someone in the ditch to shovel the “crumbs” out.  There are different shovels that one uses to dig-down and to crumb-out.  Neither looked like the standard shovel we use in the garden, except in the way all shovels look alike.

There is a hierarchy here too, about who digs down and who crumbs out.  I am not sure which direction it goes, but I do know it is considered bad form to shovel into the ditch more than you have to.  You don’t want to make unnecessary work for the fellow who is crumbing.

Dad was a master.  I wouldn’t call him an artist, but he did care about the craft.  Would “artesan” be the right word? 

Our house had been built in an area subject to water run-off.  He spent his leisure time with a shovel, sculpting the land to direct the water away from our house.

He taught me (and my brother) this fine art by what the education theorists call “the Discovery Method.”  In his case, it was implemented as follows: “Boys, the sewer ditch has filled up.  Clean it out.”

It was June; it was Oklahoma; it was humid; we were in the sewer.  It wasn’t the nastiest thing I’ve ever had to do but I won’t say more.

This summer and fall I’ve thought about Dad and the shovel many times during my “Summer Stay-cation.”

As you know with the Pandemic and all, there has been much less travel.  I’d wanted to go to Paraguay; I’d wanted to go to Scotland.  Well, no.

But there is only so much sitting on my backside, watching Netflix that even I can stand.  Our beloved dog Charlie passed-away and I (against standing advice from my personal physician) buried him.  In doing so, I remembered I knew how to use a shovel.

After that, I found a paver sidewalk in my backyard that only went about as third as far as it needed to.  I redid it and redid it right while I was at it.  

It was at that point the trips to Home Despot started.  I started buying pavers, gravel, weed cloth, and sand to haul them home in the back of my CRV.  Jean, my better half, was there with me to do anything that required bending and to call 911 if necessary.

Then I finished it.  And like God did after he made the Seas, I looked at what I’d done and saw that it was good.

Having done that, Jean and I made a fire pit and had a Halloween weenie-roast with the grandkids.

Dad, I never thought I’d say this, and I am sure you never thought you’d hear it, but thanks for teaching me how to use a shovel.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )