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Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 14:40:36 :
In Reply to: Re: What's going to happen when... posted by copey on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 20:35:23 :
If setting up a carburetor and non-electronic distributor is a dying art, what about packing and mule-skinning? Once the gas is gone, it won't matter if anybody knows how to tweak a carburetor, but we're sure going to need jerk-line muleskinners to drive long distance freight wagons, and once the roads fall apart (hard to fix them without diesel) we'll need packers who can throw a diamond hitch around anything you can imagine and haul it through a river and up a mountainside if need be. I doubt there's a single old-time muleskinner alive today, and precious few packers who can pack anything more complicated than the equipment for a dude-ranch hunting camp outfit. In the old days they'd pack things like a continuous mile of wire rope (a few coils on each mule), a piano (to a whorehouse in Murray, I believe), all the lumber to build a fire lookout, and the cast-iron bull wheel for an aerial tramway. Talk about a lost art!
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