– by Martin Blakesley –
I’d have had my fingers wrapped around this mug of thick, hot coffee and been enjoying the view from the hot tub long before now, if my coffee grinder hadn’t died and I hadn’t wasted precious time doing “The Guy Thing:” taking it apart with my multi-tool, in the foolish belief it was fixable. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson six months ago, when the same thing happened and I responded in exactly the same way, with exactly the same result, before begrudgingly taking out my old hand mill, just as I’ve now done again. Its heads are worn nearly smooth and you have to turn the crank “just so” to get any action out of them but, hey, I’m drinking freshly ground coffee I wouldn’t be drinking otherwise, and I’m sitting here thinking …
… When Henry Ford instructed his engineers to search the junk yards for old Ford automobiles, determine which parts had not worn out, and then make those parts weaker, not stronger, in the new vehicles rolling off his assembly line, he introduced an idea that’s paved the way to our modern way of life and the pile of bits and grounds on my counter. But where, I wonder, did this idea come from?
Perhaps he’d read Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1858 poem The One-Hoss Shay, partly inspired by the All Saints’ Day earthquake of 1755, which was so huge that it shook Lisbon, Portugal to its foundations, causing huge loss of life, and its shockwaves were felt across the Atlantic, in Boston, by Holmes’ forebears. Appearing a century later, Holmes’ poem, sub-titled “A Logical Story,” described what happens when blindly optimistic logic is carried to logical consequences, when practice is guided by reason alone, rather than by reason tempered with experience and common sense.
The central character, an inventive Yankee church deacon, designs and builds a one-horse “chaise” or carriage to such exacting standards that each part was equally strong, thus guaranteeing it would never wear out. And “It was on the terrible earthquake-day that the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.” Well, the shay endured from that day, for exactly 100 years. Then, at the exact moment that the 1755 earthquake struck, it quite unexpectedly wore out all at once. And what, Holmes asks his reader, does he think the deacon found, as he got up and brushed himself off? “The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, / As if it had been to the mill and ground! / You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce, / how it went to pieces all at once, / all at once, and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst.”
So there you have it: my modern grinder succumbed to the planned obsolescence inherent in the modern assembly line production that is the legacy of the inventor of the “horseless carriage;” he was inspired by a poem about a horse-drawn carriage that became instantly obsolete, the poem having been inspired, in turn, by an earthquake that rendered virtually obsolete then-prevalent Europe thinking.
Sitting here, a century-and-a-half later, perched precariously but optimistically on our edge of The Rim of Fire, I can’t help but wonder: given the imminence (geologically speaking) of our own “Great Lisbon Earthquake” and the recent bursting of our horseless carriage’s bubble, who’s writing a One-Hoss Shay for these times? Who’s it inspiring to dream and realize the next big, defining idea, and what will it all mean for me and my coffee-drinking descendants? Only time will tell. Meantime, this cuppa joe is well worth the effort, the view from atop Mt. Belcher is stunning, and – if I can get my hands on a replacement grinder today – tomorrow might be an even better day.
