OT, Kinda long...
Frank Mutchler in Colorado Springs
>Listening to my favorite radio talk show guy today gave me some insight into the power tool user vs the hand tool user discussion that peppers our messages.
The host was talking about the lack of personal contact our society seems to have. Mentioned gas stations of yore where the guy pumped your gas, checked your oil, washed your windshield and chatted with you while doing so. Replaced by self-serve cash & dash stations.
Air conditioning that keeps us in the house on a hot evening instead sitting out on the porch hoping to catch a breeze while talking with a neighbor or greeting a passer-by. I remember my mother talking with a neighbor across the fence while hanging washed clothes on a line in the backyard.
He mentioned how T.V. has replaced the need to have friends over for chats, cards, etc.
While he spoke, I thought about machine tools that have replaced the human contact with the wood; the absence of tell-tale marks left on the bottom of a hand made table by a scrub plane. Marks that testified to the once present skilled hands of a human. The marks that were once just one of many individual threads that bound us into a community.
Is it possible that those who cling most tenaciously to the Neander/Galoot philosophy are possibly the most 'human' of us all? Willing to forsake the convenience/speed/money that power tools promise to bring to a shop; they quietly engage the enemy in a pitched battle. In a society where time is money, to the unthinking casual observer they appear to be squandering their time. (Thinking of St. Roy, now) In the only way they can, they fire silent volleys against a society apparently bent on breeding a generation of citizens to whom impersonal relationships are considered as normal as Mom (surrogate of course), Apple Pie (Sarah Lee of course) and Baseball (on T.V. of course).