The Great Jettison: Back Breaking Tools, Unleashed!

The tools below are what a poor cheap man can afford to use on his home.  Power tools?  Nah!  "But what about that electric trimmer*?"  One might say in one's most snooty and pretentious voice.

"AHA!  I bought it for cheap, couldn't figure out how to restring it and never used it!"  I would say to you, o snooty one!

The snow shovel?  Used that baby A LOT.  Turns out a double wide driveway is nice for having friends and family over, but not so fun to dig out with after a big snow pile.  I spent many an hour listening to Car Talk and Retronauts re-run podcasts (rodcasts?) while hefting out mound after heavy mound.

*Follow the jump to see the electric trimmer...

The rest of these tools all got special attention from my hands and my back.  I was a diligent garden raker and hoer (that must be a word because it doesn't have a red 'you spelled that wrong, fool' kinda line under it) every Spring.  In fall, I would enjoy an Iowa Football post-game show while piling up big mounds of leaves to bag up and leave to rot over the winter for some fine leaf mould mulch.  Don't knock that until you've tried it, gardeners!

The edger I grabbed for free on a curbside and used it to edge once or twice.  My most memorable experience with that edger (who else can say that last phrase?) was a very cold and snowy day in which the plow piled up the snow and slush in front of the driveway and it froze solidly overnight.  In the morning, my snow shovel was ill-equipped for the hard, packed mess.  My real shovel was in the shed, drifted in for the winter.  The only metal tool I had handy was that edger, so down I went to the end of the driveway, hacking and slashing.  What a sight I must have been, but the sharp edges and the extra heft of that edger really did a number on all that frozen slush.  I sure was glad I'd snapped it up from that curbside the previous Autumn!

...Anyway, I sold 'em all as a set for 10 bucks.  That seems to anticlimactic after all that.  I guess that's what every sale comes down to:  All those memories (happy and dismal) remain, but the physical object just disappear into someone else's reality.

Oh well, now the story of the edger lives on in internet infamy, so it is now in your reality, diligent reader!

As always, read, subscribe, comment, and enjoy!