Idiot Stick

In East Texas we called it a "yo-yo".

Basically it was a scythe. The design include a long handle which ended in a metal fork which held a blade at tension. It's purpose was to be swung back and forth in order to cut tall weeds.

Before the advent of mechanized weed eaters, lawn mowers, and such, the "yo-yo" was the only way to keep the steady creep of growing nature at bay around one's home yard. My mom's dad (Papuh) told me that during the Great Depression he was very lucky to get a job slinging a "yo-yo" in the bar ditches of county roads for the princely sum of 50 cents per day!

Trust me based on my personal experience, the business end of a "yo-yo" will wear your butt down to a nub in a heart beat on a humid August day. Driving that puppy ain't for the faint of heart.

Dad just called it an "idiot stick". Only a very desperate person, or an idiot, would wind up and repeatedly force the sharpened cold steel blade through the bahia, sedge, or blue stem that prolifically sprouted in Wright City, Texas.

Today was a history making event for the ole ranch hand. I planted a rural delivery mailbox at the front gate.

Yeah, I've received mail in a country mail box in front of the house. I have just never been the one to drop that particle seed in the earth to see what it might grow in the form of postal delivery.

Enter the modern IDIOT STICK:

Tin Star Ranch country is a quarter inch of topsoil on top of 40 miles of solid rock. You want to dig a hole to stab the post on a mail box, you pound the crap out of the ground with a "rock bar".

That's right sports fans, said ROCK BAR is 6 feet of case hardened steel with a sharpened chisel point that tips the scales at no less than 40 pounds. Don't take no rocket surgeon to operate it. Peruse the simple step by step formula:

1. Stand with the desired post hole betwixt yore lawgs.

2. Raise the idiot stick toward heaven.

3. Drive that sucka into the earth like your life depended on it (MISS YORE TOES!!)

4. Repeat the above til your soul leaves your miserable,worn out, spent (old-fat) body.

5. Take great joy in the 3-4 inches of rock you have excavated?

6. Curse the inventor of rural delivery mail.

7. Long for the days of easy work like slinging a yo-y0.

8. Aw hell, drink a col' beer and see if the hole will dig itself?

9. Finally decide to "shorten" the hole and leave the mailbox about a foot higher than planned?

10. Step back and admire the "masterpiece" of an idiot stick operator extraordinaire.

Now don't try to tell me the ole fat ranch hand don't lead an exciting and rewarding lifestyle!