“I just read this one for the very first time today at the request/brute forcing of a co-worker.
So Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, which has eyelashes TO DIE FOR, dig a big hole, but they get so whipped up in digging the hole that the steam shovel is stuck inside. They come up with a solution of sorts. I won’t spoil it here, but let me just say that although it’s clever, it’s poor practice to rely on cleverness to alleviate the problems of poor planning.
Mike Mulligan is a classic children’s book character: The Crammer. Remember that story about the grasshopper and the ant? The story where one of them is preparing for winter while the other one is just screwing around? I’m guessing it was the grasshopper who was screwing around. Ants seem pretty industrious while grasshoppers have no occupation other than jumping directly into your face. And some of them can fly, sort of? What the hell?
Anyway, that grasshopper was the classic Crammer who learns a lesson about not doing all his work at the last minute.
Mike Mulligan is like that too. He decides that the answer to his problem is to do a week’s worth in one day. He’s so confident he’ll finish that he stakes his entire wage for the job on it.
It’s weird because the book makes it seem that if he pulls off this one job, everything will be great. If he doesn’t, he’ll be screwed. But it’s one day of work. If your financial life rides on one work day, you should probably spend less time steam-shoveling and making steamshovel-related bets and spend more time MAKING MONEY.
As much as Mike Mulligan is a classic character, there’s an even more popular children’s character in this book: The Unmitigated Asshole.
Henry B. Swap is just a real ass the entire time for no apparent reason. He’s always sneering, and he balks at the idea of a steam shovel. Some guy shows up to my town and says he’ll dig a foundation in a day, what do I care if he uses a steam shovel? He could use enslaved orphans who are using the corpses of other orphans as shovels if he can get it done in 12 hours. That’s really none of my business.
Also, like most UA’s in these books, Henry B. Swap comes around at the end. I guess these guys, these unlovable curmudgeons, just need a light miracle to bring them around to being nice for a change. I mean, sure, he spent 35 years drinking himself to oblivion, has been a rude butthole to every person he’s ever met, and once he even hit a transient who was trying to hitchhike. And though Henry B. Swap is 70-80% sure that the transient did not survive that impact, all it took was a steam shovel doing an honest day’s work to really turn things around for him.
On the plus, I did find this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z1R5vDG2Tg
“But then came a grotesque parade of new shovels…” Classic.”