In the average American homeowner’s garage, there are all sorts of tools and machines. Some are pretty simple, like shovels or rakes (one step up from a stick, actually); others are more complex and usually run on some sort of motor or engine. They many times are used to cut something – grass, brush, weeds.
Most of them are merely powered versions of that thing in the picture at the top of the page, in pieces, awaiting the DH’s ministrations with glue and a screwdriver: A scythe.
Invented before the birth of Christ, this more advanced (and advantaged) version of a sickle allowed mowers and reapers to work standing up. Using a sickle is real ‘stoop labor’ and you can’t really get any speed with it as the motion is: Bend down, grasp a bunch of grain plants in one hand, cut it with the sickle and lay it down. With a scythe, a mower or reaper can walk and swing the scythe with every step. The advance of putting a long handle and a blade at one end enabled workers to literally cover far more ground. It also enabled workers to organize the work so that mowers and reapers would line up in a field with space in between them and work their way down the field and the whole field would be finished at pretty much the same time. OH – just as a note: Mowing refers to cutting grass; cutting grain is referred to as reaping – so “The Grim Reaper”, that is, Death represented as carrying a scythe, is obviously meant as a being associated with harvesting grains. I guess he can’t be bothered mowing the lawn. (more…)
