"Living in rural Alaska, we're pretty much on our own when it comes to maintaining local roads. So we're fortunate to have Bruce Dunbar, a retired heavy equipment operator, living on our road," says Bob Andrews, of Hollis, who recently sent FARM SHOW photos of a backhoe-mounted jackhammer that Andrews put together for making road repairs.

"Bruce tries to keep our road in the best possible condition. Recently, he decided to remove an unwieldy hump in the road. Gathering a jackhammer, a compressor and a few semi-willing neighbors, Bruce decided we were all a bit too old to be spending long hours jackhammering. So he designed and built a mounting system that lets us use the jackhammer on our community backhoe, and instantly the job became doable and even enjoyable. I think it was American ingenuity at its finest.

"By the way, the community backhoe is another project of Bruce's. After 40 years of neglect and sitting outside in the weather, the backhoe was in pretty sad shape. Many people, including myself, were ready to junk it. Bruce spent a few months rebuilding and refurbishing everything from the brakes to the throttle, hydraulics, controls, lights, gauges and even gave the machine a new coat of paint. Today we have a very serviceable machine."