"Peter Allen" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:"Lee Michaels" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:
"Lee Michaels" wrote
Quoted message said:
Another real world function that isn't done much any more is anything
involving a wheelbarrow. Hise wrote about the really big guys he saw
that ran the wheelbarrows up the ramps that serviced big brick jobs on
the construction sites of a hundred years ago. This became the basis of
the Hise squat. It also played a role in the creation of the trap bar.
To continue this thought, I found this on another newsgroup talking about
the strength required to operate old machinery and to do things before
all the modern labor saving equipment.
********************************
Thanks for the post.
I'm apparently related to a man known as "Old Chris." Chris used heavy
wheelbarrows in the 1800's and early 1900's and built up almost
unbeliveable
upper body strength. The story goes that in his 70's Chris could still
lift
a full grown man with one arm and toss him out of the mess tent.
-- Mark
*****************************************
I used wheelboarrows on the farm. But as little as possible. It was hard
work.
I was moving gravel recently - 2 tons, which needed spreading up a 40m
driveway. With a wheelbarrow and shovel.
Which felt like fairly decent work, and 2 tons sounds like an impressive
number.
Except that 2 tons of gravel is actually a pile a bit less than waist
high. Much smaller than your farm manure pile or whatever, and fairly flat
easy ground to wheel it over.
It is common on a farm to wheel the manure up a ramp onto a pile or into a
manure speader. Which is essentially a large wagon. It geets real fun when
it is wet from rain. And you have to run up the ramp with the fully loaded
wheelbarrow. This is to get the necessary momentum to flip the wheelbarrow
up and dump its contents into the appropriate spot.
This can get a little tricky. Sometimes you can lose it over the side on the
way up. I have done this before. Sometimes you will lose the wheelbarrow
and its contents over the front. Which involves a messy job of extracting
the wheelbarrow from being buried in a lot of manure. And other times you
may just not be fast (or strong) enough and the wheelbarrow just doesn't
flip up. Then you have to do some heavy duty lifting and flinging to get the
wheelbarrow into position.
But the absolute worst thing that can happen is to flip the wheelbarrow up,
lose it and not be able to let it loose. This flings you over the
wheelbarrow directly into the manure pile with great force. This will bury
you in the manure pile. I have never done this. My brother did it once. He
let go every time after that when he was losing control. It wasn't worth
another trip into manure world. He would just dig out the wheelbarrow
instead of having to climb or swim to the surface himself.
Lee Michaels
shoveling [censored] is not
something I miss
