I knew about the Davebilt, a big, heavy-duty nutcracker, because some influencers in the rewilding community favor them for cracking acorns, the first step in preparing them for eating. But I had never seen one until last Saturday at the farmer’s market.
The walnut and apple vendor had one set up at his stand, fixed with heavy-duty C-clamps to one of the tables. I saw it, wondered immediately if it was a Davebilt, learned it was, and then watched the vendor crack two and half pounds of walnuts with it in about a minute. The nuts were cracked just the way you’d want—many halved, some cracked a little more, all of them open enough to easily get at the delicious nutmeats.
I loved everything about it. It made sense to me, I could see and understand all its parts, and when I took a turn moving the crank to crack nuts of my own, I found it easy to do. It’s a handsome tool.
Nowadays, I find myself surrounded by and reliant on so many machines that I know nothing or very little about—and could certainly never “fix”—that the simplicity and elegance of tools like the Davebilt take on greater meaning.
I have been in situations where my car breaks down and I pull off the road. I’ll open the hood of the car expecting to find…what? A giant on/off switch? Because, even though I’m a mechanic’s daughter, I don’t know the first thing about fixing cars, or even what the different parts are. And yet, I drive somewhere nearly every day.
And of course, there are my beloved electronics. Once, my phone went rogue and erased everything on my iphone calendar AND my contacts. I showed one of my sons who said, “Your phone has been screaming at you and you’ve been ignoring it. Now it’s punishing you.” I didn’t pay proper attention to the fact that I had hardly any storage left. I had noticed that my cell was sending me messages, but I didn’t understand what it was trying to tell me—we don’t really speak the same language. Nor do I think it effectively communicated the urgency of the situation. And a microchip? How do you make that? What is it? You can’t make it with things you find around the house, right? I need it, I rely on it, but I’m deeply ignorant about it.
Here are some things I love about the human-powered machines, from the manual can openers to those bikes at fairs and festivals that are rigged to power a blender when you pedal them:
*They offer the clarity of understanding how the things that populate your life work. (Although, as I think about it, I wouldn’t know how to attach a bike to a blender to make a smoothie. Still.)
*You get to use your own muscle, skeleton, and energy to locomote or to power any of a variety of tools to complete tasks and accomplish things.
*Human-powered tools and methods often require some slowing down. (Electric vs. manual can openers may be an exception.) Walking or biking to locomote, you’ll almost certainly see things you wouldn’t see while driving because you’re moving more slowly through your environment.
* Any time we burn human energy instead of fossil fuels, we make a positive contribution to slowing the forward march of climate change.
No, I don’t long for a return to Colonial times. And I really appreciate my washing machine. But I think dipping one’s toe in the waters of human-powered tools is valuable. Using the Davebilt and biking to the grocery store are not going to reverse climate change. They’re little ways for individual people to move in a certain direction. I favor those little ways.