On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 20:49:58 -0400, "Bruce T"
wrote:

,;I can tell you that Item 643 is a very effective device for teaching recent
,;high-school graduates that a college education is a GOOD THING. Speaking
,;from practical experience, a four hour stint (with two other young and
,;healty teen-age males) carrying said device (filled with moartar) up a
,;series of ladders to an older Italian gentleman laying brick gave me
,;first-hand experience. The Italian brick layer knew no conversational
,;English that we could discern (save for "faster" and "more mud", but he had
,;a vocabulary of English cuss words that would astound Roget. By noon, the
,;three of us were so tired we could barely crawl to our cars to run away and
,;hide. I never went back. I wrote my wages off to experience, and over the
,;ensuing fifty years, never regretted it for a moment.

That brought back memories of a summer hauling mud to bricklayers.
Every morning I would wake up with my fingers conformed to the shape
of the wheelbarrow handles. It took about five minutes of slowly
loosening them before they functioned normally. "More mud" must be a
basic part of their vocabulary.

By September I was anxious to get back to college.