The Hoe Story

This is the grubbing hoe I used to dig holes for the plants yesterday. If you click on the photo and enlarge it, you might be able to see the $7.00 price marked on the handle. I bought it at a junk sale somewhere, I think at Fraleys at Harrison last year. It is one of many grubbing hoes I have owned. It might be more accurate to say one of the many that has passed through my hands. The men in my family like to use my hoes, shoveles and pick axes for prying bars resulting in a broken handle, making the tool useless unless you just want to throw it at someone who has done something to annoy you, like maybe broken the handle of your hoe or shovel. I have tried, with absolutely no success, to educate these men to the fact that we have several iron pry bars in various lenghts that make much better pry bars than my hoes. Right now I have this used hoe, a new shovel (a new exact mate to the one son broke a couple of months ago), and an old pick axe with a broken handle. I am a bit old to be welding a pick axe anyway, so I have left it broken for the last few years.

My first grubbing hoe was a gift from my father of the one he had owned for years and years. My second grubbing hoe was the one I bought so that I would not have to use the family heirloom hoe in my garden. Both hoes were at one time hanging in the old shop next to my house. Both hoes at sometime unknown to me came up missing. One of these hoes is at my brother Richard's house and the other is at my sister Helen's house. No one has any idea which is actually the hoe Daddy owned and which was the one I bought as they looked identical. I would not have known where the hoes got off too if they had not confessed to taking the hoe that Daddy owned. I disremember now which one confessed first, but I think they both got what they deserved, a hoe that might be Daddy's hoe, or might be one I bought at the hardware store.