Though it happened a great distance from the path around the Falls, an important understanding of evolution was formed that separated man from the apes due to an ability to use tools. Some studies have suggested that apes made use of crude tools but never progressed to the point that they had rolling tool boxes with ball-bearing drawers.
If use of tools is one of the important distinctions between man and the apes, does having more tools suggest even higher levels of evolution?
Reflection on the use of tools came into play over the weekend at the Oconto County Breakfast on the Farm.
As always, the planning committee worked to make it more successful than the previous year’s event. There were displays of the latest and greatest in the dairy industry and a tribute to classic farm equipment and tools from a couple of generations ago.
For several years in a row, this observer was part of the flipping pancake crew, no disrespect intended. Over the years the Breakfast on the Farm committee has invested in new equipment to streamline the operations and service the crowds. At one time the equipment and tools to feed the crowds was a mishmash brought from home or picked up from sundry sources.
For the pancake crew, there are some basic tools. Batter needs to be mixed. A number of hot grills need to be fired up. Batter needs to be dropped on the grill. Pancakes need be flipped. Then the pancakes need to be kept warm for serving.
Each step in the process uses specialized tools. Cases and individual boxes of batter need to be opened. One of the tools in that process is a box cutter. Virgie Damp was in charge of the mixing operation and had two different box cutters. She issued the “safer” one to one of her assistants, who will remain nameless but was a former director of instruction for the school district. In late morning she proceeded to use the safer box cutter in an inappropriate fashion and gave herself a nice nick that needed attention from the EMT crew. She survived and returned to continue with the mixing process.
Al Stranz is the captain of the pancake cooking crew. He was proud to show and demonstrate his new tool, a laser thermometer that could measure the temperature of a specific spot on the grill surface. If recollection is accurate, he noted that the ideal temperature for cooking was 375 degrees Fahrenheit. He seemed to enjoy jumping from one grill to another monitoring the temperatures. At one point he noted that my grill was too hot and needed to be turned down.
While the laser thermometer provided a great deal of accuracy with the digital readout, the same couldn’t be said for the consistency of the grill, which had four gas burners, each controlled by their own knobs. Each knob had four or five marks on it, and it was hit or miss as to what each mark represented as far as temperature. Like many other things in life, flipping pancakes is an art not a science.
Getting to the heart of the matter, the art of flipping pancakes can depend on having the right tool. As noted earlier, the tool collection had been a mixed bag of kitchen flippers of various shapes and sizes but mostly light duty. A couple of years ago the committee invested in several professional-grade stainless steel flippers with thick handles that could take the pressure of grill scraping and survive a marathon six-hour stint of pancake flipping.
Even with that group of new tools, there were two options, solid blade or a blade with round perforations, perhaps to make them a little lighter for those who wanted every advantage possible to be a flipping pro. Understanding the importance of being set up for success, this observer’s flipping choice was the one with perforations.
Throughout the morning, except for a few breaks of a minute or two in length, that tool was never out of this flipper’s hand. It became an extension of the hand, and practiced wrist action made it dance.
Ultimately, it had to be laid aside as the lines of attendees wound down shortly before 1 p.m. It felt like saying goodbye to an old friend. There were lots of appreciated conversations with old friends that day, but the problem with spatula tools is talking to a spatula tends to be a one-way conversation. That might not have been a problem for the apes.
