June 20, 2009
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All In A Day's Work
I’m sweating underneath my cap and sunscreen lathered on every few hours in keeping with the directions on the squeeze tube. Muscles are tightening as I lift two studs (in layman’s terms, an upright used in house framing) over to where my partner and I are working. My arms feel like dead weight by the end of our first day of construction.
I banged a few nails at the Home Depot’s Kids Workshop when I was younger. That was fun. Turns out getting the framing of a house done is much harder work.
Our site supervisor, Mr. R, a California native, went to Cal Poly SLO and moved out to Louisiana to work with Habitat for Humanity. When my partner and I, frustrated, made faces at our imperfect nailing, Mr. R would come over to fix a wayward nail or hit a board into place.
On one of our last days at the site, he told us a high school group was slated to come in after us. I think he meant to say groups of high school students don’t get as much done. Thank goodness we were college students on spring break.
Mid-week was the wall-raising ceremony. Businesspeople came out for the special day. Each grabbed a tool belt and a hammer and set to work nailing. As the ceremony drew near, Mr. R wove expertly in and out of the crowd of workers with a can of Liquid Nails. The important people posed with the beaming soon-to-be homeowner in his not-yet living room as I wondered how to make sense of one new home in an area filled with poverty.
Our ancestors worked with their hands long before the Internet, iPhones, and the Digital Age. I could argue that working with your hands like an auto mechanic or a carpenter fulfills a basic need in human beings:
Physical labor.
(Possibly) working outdoors.
Seeing your immediate product.
Doing something you really know how to do, losing yourself in work that is genuinely useful and has a certain integrity to it, all the while seeming to have a lot of fun (1) means no more fabric upholstered partition walls.
No more paper shuffling.
No more Excel spreadsheets.
Just you, left to the mercy of the elements and the constraints of your physical body.
Traffic? Well... you might still have that.
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(1) See NY Times' article, The Case for Working With Your Hands, by Matthew B. Crawford. Here is the link: Link.
Comments (3)
haha i definitely agree with this. chemically makes sense too if you think about the endorphins you get when you work yourself to muscle pain.
Working with your hands is a great experience and does give you a concrete sense of satisfaction, especially if you are doing it for a good cause like Habitat. Thanks for stopping by my site!
Pretty cool article. I wish someone had taught me how to build a house in high school.
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