SilentKnight

This topic reminded me of a textfile I read long ago:

Albie arrives early in the morning, kicking up swirls of dust
with his pickup truck. He unloads his tools and starts to work.
He paints and he mends. He does carpentry and electrical work,
plumbing and gardening. He can pave a driveway or rebuild a barn
or fix a TV set. Albie is a handyman.

He is old, with a slow, heavy walk. He wears his hair short
and his pants low. He works for a fellow who owns several
cottages, one of which I rent in the summer. Albie turns the water
on every spring and off every winter. He put in the dishwasher.
He fixed the frame for the bed. He renovated the barn across the
way.

Albie touches things the way sculptors do, with the authority
of a man who works with his hands. Lumber is his marble. His
fingers roam the surface, searching out what, I'm not sure. I
think it's his way of saying hello, of approaching the wood as a
rider might a horse, settling it down. His fingers see things his
eyes cannot.

The other day Albie built a little garbage can shed for the
neighbours up the road. It had three compartments, one for each
can, and it opened from the top so the garbage bags can be put in,
and from the front so the cans may be removed. Each lid worked
perfectly, hinged one way and then another.

Albie painted the shed green and let it dry. I went out to
look at it, amazed that a man had made it, that it had not been
bought somewhere. I put my finger to the smooth paint.

Done, I thought. But the next day Albie came back with a machine and
roughed up the paint. Every so often he would feel with his
fingers. He was adding another coat, he said, although to my eyes
it did not need one. That is not the way Albie works, though.
What he makes by hand does not look handmade.

I am lost around wood and tools, and without the basic
knowledge of how things are put together. How is a pencil made,
or a pen? How do you get paper from a tree, or ink from...well,
from what? I know how to use the objects around me, the answering machine, the computer, the telephone...not make them.
Should they break, someone else comes to fix them.

But nothing in Albie's world holds mystery for him. Because
at some time he either built it, repaired it or took it apart. The
fuse box, the brick patio, the barn, the cottage these are all
Albie's creations. I envy his command of things basic, which, like
the ability to survive in the wild, it seems to me that men once
possessed, and should possess.

The people Albie works for do complicated business, float bond
issues, negotiate contracts. He does not know how to buy and sell
securities, and he has never taken a company public. But when the
men who do those things need sheds built or patios laid, they come
to Albie, or people like Albie, and follow him around like puppies.
They understand that what Albie does is of genuine and great value.

At the end of the day Albie gathers his tools, places them in
the truck and drives off. He leaves behind a swirl of dust and at
least one person who wonders why Albie gets paid so little for
doing so much. But then again his is quiet, individual work.
There are no meetings or memos. He is alone with his thoughts.
And he is master of all he surveys. A fine definition, I think,
of freedom.