The light from the TV filled the room. It was late, and I couldn't sleep.
"It slices, dices, chops and purees -- You can't cook without one." Right, I thought sarcastically. That's just what I need. Then I keyed the remote.
(Click!)
"...all the tunes you parked to in high school, this is the one rock collection you can't pass up." Not all the tunes I parked to I thought.
(Click!)
"The new Garden Claw, from the makers of the Garden Weasel, is just the tool you've been looking for."
(Click!)
Even though, during the 1970s, one of my advertising agency jobs was to obtain legal approval for all of my client's advertising, I couldn't help but notice that, since the 1980s, the Federal Trade Commission no longer was stressing the truthfulness doctrines. Every new commercial was beginning to look like the famous Saturday Night Live "Bass-O-Matic" skit.
I was up at the hardware store a few weeks ago, browsing the aisles, a typical "guy" kind of thing. Every once in awhile you've got to fix something around the house to prove your worth.
I was trying to suppress the guilt trip my partner, the Lady Marjorie, was trying to lay on me for watching almost eight hours of continuous televised automobile racing the previous day.
As I turned down one aisle, I happened across the Garden Claw. Hmmm, I thought, no harm in just examining it.
For those of you who haven't seen the ad, the Claw consists of six hardened-steel tines, welded at inclined angles to a base plate. From out of the other side of the base plate, a four-foot long, half-inch diameter steel tube is welded.
To the top of the long tube, you attach with a single nut and bolt (the only assembly required) what looks like a set of bicycle handlebars.
By twisting the handlebars clockwise, the angled tines dig themselves into the ground you wish to cultivate, thereby effectively preparing for planting, or just loosening and turning over, the earth you're attending.
Because the handlebars are about three feet wide, this provides the leverage you need to turn the tines into hard-packed dirt.
The selling feature that convinced me to give the Garden Claw a try was that you remained balanced, with both feet firmly planted. With my questionable balance, standing on one foot and then trying to push a shovel into the ground with the other foot is indeed a precarious situation.
"Well," asked my partner the Lady Marjorie, "what did you buy this time?" I unloaded the cardboard box that contained the Garden Claw. (I could tell she was still a little peeved about the previous day's orgy of internal-combustion competition.)
"I got me a new garden tool," I proudly crowed. "With this, dare I say it, I'm going to cultivate all the front flower beds, turnover the dirt between the stepping-stones and weed the rockery."
"I'll believe that when I see it."
I got two box end wrenches out of my tool box ("Always use the right tool," my father always said, "for the right job.") and quickly had my Garden Claw assembled.
I positioned the Claw over the first section of ground, took a firm grip on the handlebars and started twisting.
It worked!
After only a couple of hours and a blister on one finger (wear gloves), I had all the ground I intended to attack, cultivated. And, other than the blister, I had to expend a lot less energy than I would have thought, not to mention I'm back in my partner's good graces.
That's always a desirable place to be; especially since next week there will be even more races to be watched.[[In-content Ad]]
