04/09/2017
During the years I lived in the Finger Lakes region of New York, I made my living doing carpentry and stone work. In the late 1970's, there were many years where the entire season, Spring thru Fall, involved “juggling” natural stone (hand gathered) into walls, walks and patios, and using quarried stone to do repair and restoration work. The excavation was always done by hand, and I usually worked alone.
My preferred digging tool was the maddox, and more than a few were blunted and worn to a stub. Because of the similarity in size, shape and function of the maddox and the carpenter’s “adz” (used to square logs into usable timber), I often referred to my work as “hand hewn” landscapes. Physically: a bag of Portland cement then, as it does now, weighs 94lbs., and I have muscled hundreds of them into mortar boxes and small mixers. The kind of work I performed, with the exception of an occasional patio base or specific footing, seldom allowed me to avail myself the “ease” and expediency of delivery by a ready-mix concrete truck. So, I dug the ditches, mixed the concrete and mortar, hauled and juggled the stone.
During one job, requiring many trips to gather stone from a nearby stream bank, I decided to “guestimate” the tonnage that I lifted daily. Having hauled many measured loads of mason sand from quarries, I knew that when the helper springs of my truck made contact with the frame supports, the load was at least 2,000 lbs. Over the course of several weeks I kept tract of the number of loads, as well as the number of times that I likely handled each stone.
The routine went something like this: one lift out of the stream bed onto the bank (not counting the ones inspected and rejected), a second lift up onto the truck, a third time when off loading and carrying the stones to the work area, and then 2-5 more times while puzzling the stones. So each 1-ton load equaled at least 5-6 tons of lifting, and there were more than a few days that I’d hauled and used three truck loads, (plus digging, backfill, and cement work). On most days there was far more building than hauling, but on the heavy days, I often sang (as autobiography), the Tennessee Ernie Ford hit song “Sixteen Tons.”
