Crowbar

A couple weeks ago, Mr. ETB made a trip to the hardware store for some nails and ant baits. Instead, he came home with a crowbar he's taken to calling, "Easy Tom." Excuse me, I've just been corrected, Easy Tom is a ripping bar. Being the sort of person that names her sourdough starters after Italian Humanists, I suppose I ought to go easy on the better half's naming of tools, Burroughs-esque as it sounds.

"Hey kid, did ya ever see Easy Tom ripping apart a wooden palate? Kid, I tell ya, it was tasty."

He cannot stop taking apart palates. We have many just piled up by the rubbish pit waiting to be burned, and this is the sort of thing that bothers my husband. He's fenced in the potato patch, and the compost, and I half expect to find a shoddily nailed together clubhouse in the yard with a "NO Girls (with a backward "s") sign hammered askew in the front.

All this hammering and ripping has taken a toll though, as Mr. ETB suffers from a tendon problem in his thumb commonly referred to as, "trigger finger." I'd never seen it actually happen until this evening, and I must tell you, it is horrifying. The thumb gets stuck in a funny position and it takes a minute or so to go back in place.

"Me and the rube was pullin' apart wooden palates down in Saunders County with Easy Tom when the Scotsman got a case of the trigger finger. You can't shake down a mark with your thumb all bunched like that."

Anyone have any craft ideas for old wooden palates? Mr. ETB saw some Adirondack chairs that looked interesting, but I don't know if Easy Tom is up to it . Ot does seem like a shame to let such solid wood go to waste.