John Henry

 When John Henry was a little baby

Sittin’ on his Daddy’s knee

He picked up a nine pound hammer and a little piece of steel

And said, “What the heck is this supposed to mean?”

                --The Smothers Brothers

On Friday (Jan.6, Dia de los Reyes Magos and Ukrainian Christmas, to those of you playing along at home), school was closed again. The teachers were in Riobamba, hoping to be given contracts to sign fo 2012. Personally, I think it’s pretty strange to sign a contract for the calendar year instead of the school year, but that seems to be the way it is. Of course, if they didn’t get contracts, there will be no school on Monday either, and I’m not sure what my job would become. But Ecuador has taught me not to worry about such things.

Anyway, I didn’t want to sit home, so I put on my new rubber boots and went looking for work. Augustin and Elgar were working on something next to the teacher’s residence, so I let myself in. The work they were doing was cutting into a wall of earth to make room for the base of a wall that will separate the teachers’ residence from the road. This is a good idea, as the teachers’ residence sits in a kind of hole next to the road—a little mistaken traffic activity, and one of the teachers could find himself sharing his bed with an automobile.

The work involved was to cut a trench or opening under the wall of earth that runs along the side of the teachers’ residence. This work was already well under way, as Augustin, Elgar, Jose Manuel, and Antonio had been hard at it all week in the rain. Augustin, who’s plenty strong, was whacking away at the earth wall with a pick. Since the only tool I really know how to manage is a shovel, I picked one up and tried cutting into the soil at the back of the trench under the earth wall. That was ludicrous. The shovel just bounced off the incredibly dense, hard-packed soil. Soils here are clayey, and this stuff was sort of like an unbaked brick of gigantic size.

Elgar was using a vara, which simply mean bar. I’m not sure what you’d call this thing in English, though I know I’ve seen them. They are steel bars, about 6 feet long and weighing about 20 pounds. There is a chisel point at one end, and a sort of short, narrow blade on the other. You take hold of the bar and jam it into the earth (if you can) in hopes of chipping a bit of soil away. In other words, it’s like a jack hammer without any motor behind it.

So there we were, Augustin with his pick and Elgar and I with our varas, whacking away at the unyielding earth. Little progress was being made. Around this time, Jose Manuel (the one who showed me his farm in another climate zone) showed up with someone I don’t know and a small, electric motor driven jackhammer. And this is what made me think of John Henry. It is important to remember that John Henry was “driving steel,” not laying railroad track. Driving steel means hitting a steel pin into rock, so that chunks break off and you tunnel through the earth. We were doing something similar, without the hammer. I mentioned to Antonio that the soil was like cement, and he said no, this was worse, because cement shatters in a way that soil does not.

So, could we beat the steam drill? Let’s not be ridiculous. Not only could we not, we didn’t want to. We had hardly gotten anywhere in an hour. The little jackhammer immediately started cutting off big chunks of soil. All we had to do was shovel up the resulting dirt, put it in wheelbarrows and haul it away. And so we did, until all of our wheelbarrows got flat tires. By then it was about lunch time anyway, so I went and got lunch, did my afternoon in the computer room, and was glad I hadn’t done any more damage to my hands.

I did accomplish something, though. Antonio, who is in charge of this project, asked me to read the scale drawings with him. By understanding the scale of the drawings, and being able to relate one drawing to another, I was able to give him a clearer idea of what the engineer was telling him to do. My back may not be worth much, but my head seems to find a way to call attention to itself. It’s funny how an education really can make a difference in what is mostly a brute effort situation. I regret not having become an engineer of some kind. It might have been more helpful to Tolte if I had.

But the next day was Saturday, and I still had nothing to do, but the weather was pretty good for a second day and I rushed to do some laundry. While I was at it, Jose invited me to work with Pablo for the day. He told me it would involve passing bricks, something I already have some experience in. But when we got there, the job turned out to be pouring cement for actual American style curbs along on of the roads. And, because the curbs had to be a certain height, that meant cutting soil with a vara or any other tool that could accomplish the task. Because my vara skills were not too impressive, I was given a shvel, always my tool of choice, and sent to clean up chunks that Jose, using pick or vara, left behind. I also, depending on the moment, got to do a little vara work myself, to limited effect.

The funniest part of all this was that it occurred to everyone that I was a poor immigrant looking for work, as have so many Ecuadorians in the U.S. And the work was surprisingly similar to the work that immigrants do in the U.S. I moved 50 kilogram sacks of cement (not very far, but successfully), and I shoveled until we broke for lunch, and then shoveled the rest of the afternoon. The afternoon shoveling involved putting the cement into wheelbarrows. 20 bags of cement, which is what we used, is a metric ton (2200 lbs.) This was mixed with at least equal quantities of water, sand, and gravel to make concrete. I think I shoveled up my share of cement, so let’s say that in the afternoon, I moved two tons of concrete with a shovel. I don’t think I impressed anyone here other than myself, but I did last the whole work day, which I think was at least a positive surprise to my work mates. Of course, I don’t really think I would have liked to do it again today. I also understand that a more typical work day is 25 sacks of cement.

Another positive side effect was that I started hearing some of the things that people in my neighborhood are actually called. The idea here is that many people are not called by their names, at least when people are talking about them in their absence. The origins of these names are often lost to time, but the names live on. The gossip I hear may start to make more sense, now that I know who “Don Rata,”  “Zorro,” “Topo,” and “Pishungo” are.

It is now Sunday. It started out sunny, turned cold and rainy midday, and then opened up again about 4:30 for a magnificent afternoon and a spectacular sunset, which is filling the room I’m in with something like firelight. Oh, little Tolte, you sure are beautiful.