The sledgehammer was a steel head on a long handle. Ten pounds. Twelve pounds. Sixteen pounds. The weight was the tool. You did not aim the sledgehammer. You aimed yourself. You swung the handle and the head followed and the head hit the thing and the thing moved or the thing broke. The sledgehammer did not negotiate. The sledgehammer arrived at full speed with ten pounds of opinion and the opinion was always the same. Move.

The demolition man used the sledgehammer to take down walls. The mason used the sledgehammer to drive stakes. The blacksmith used the sledgehammer to shape iron. Three trades. One tool. The sledgehammer did not know which trade was holding it. The sledgehammer knew the impact. The impact was the vocabulary. The sledgehammer had one word and the word was enough.

The swing was a full body motion. Feet planted. Hips rotated. Shoulders followed. Arms extended. The head accelerated through the arc and the velocity at the bottom of the arc was the power. The power was not in the arms. The power was in the hips. The man who swung from the arms tired in an hour. The man who swung from the hips worked all day. The hips are the engine. The arms are the steering. Every good swing starts at the feet and ends at the target and the sledgehammer is the messenger between the two.

The sledgehammer broke things on purpose. That was the job. Break the concrete. Break the brick. Break the tile. The sledgehammer was the only tool on the job site whose purpose was destruction. Every other tool built. The saw cut to build. The drill bored to build. The trowel spread to build. The sledgehammer destroyed to rebuild. The destruction was not the end. The destruction was the beginning. You cannot renovate without demolition. You cannot start over without breaking what was there before.

They use hydraulic breakers now. A machine that hits the concrete sixty times a second. The hydraulic breaker does in one minute what the sledgehammer did in an hour. The hydraulic breaker does not get tired. The sledgehammer got tired because the man holding it got tired. The man got tired and the man kept swinging because the wall was not down yet and the wall did not care about the man being tired. The wall cared about the impact. The hydraulic breaker delivers impact without will. The sledgehammer delivered impact with will. The will was the man deciding the wall comes down today. The machine does not decide. The machine is told. There is a difference between deciding and being told.

See also: Pry Bar, Hod