LA PALA, LAS BOTAS Y. . .¿?

When el plomero took el sr J to Home Depot for a ladder, he also bought the pala you see on the left.  Note the ridges on the top.  Not all shovels have them and that's what he wanted.  

Then he needed some botas to wear when he uses the pala.  There's a shoe store in the market, so we went there.  They didn't have any in stock big enough, but they called their bodega somewhere else and sent someone running to get two different styles.  Which reminded us that you can get pretty much whatever you want if you know where to look and are willing to wait for someone to fetch it.  Below are the ones he chose:  size 29.5.  You'd think with globalization shoe sizes would be standardized.  But no.  And where did all these divergent measures of identically-sized shoes originate, anyhow?   In Europe, these are size 43.5; in the US, 11 1/2.  Mexico used to use the European standard, but now employs the simplest, most rational system of all:  size 29.5 is 29.5 centimeters long.     

That leaves the implement on the right--a mattock or pickaxe, so I've been informed.  We found that if we walked all the way down our street, Invierno, past a Mennonite boy selling cookies, and across a not-too-scary-for-me-to-cross highway, we ended up at Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and ... Home Depot!  Not a bad walk, and the plumber doesn't have to take us there.  So we got a grill (in case MaxiGas doesn't show up and we need to eat), and this pickaxe.  When we got to checkout, we saw it didn't have a price code on it.  The woman at the cash register had to call for a price.  She didn't know what it was so she asked el sr J, who looked at me.  Don't ask me, I said.  I just learned what it was in English.  A male clerk was called over and he said it was a pico.  Also the word for a mountain peak, as in Pico de Orizaba, the highest mountain in Mexico.   So now we all know and it even seems easy enough to remember: pickaxe/pico.    We took a taxi home. 

What's he going to shovel and pick, you might ask.  Not Pico de Orizaba.  He's going to get the wire grass out of the back yard and turn it into a garden/orchard.  While not ruining those new shoes.