“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, and on the seventh—holystone the decks and scrape the cable.” Such was the life of a seaman back when ships were wood, and men were iron. If you’ve never heard of holystoning, it was a process to smooth and whiten wooden decks by scrubbing them on your knees with an abrasive block of stone.
We don’t have a wooden deck, but the white paint on our fiberglass deck occasionally needs to be refreshed. It had been several years, and the decks looked awful. So, each of the past few days — we’ve had great weather lately — I’ve washed the deck, taped an area, and painted, on my knees. Finishing the last area today, it ocurred to me how some things never really change, how this was the modern form of holystoning.
Thankfully, I don’t have to do it every Sunday.
Quote from Richard Henry Dana, Jr's Two Years Before the Mast (1840)
No comments:
Post a Comment