S is for scales and sheep-shearing shears

.

For ABC Wednesday, let's say S is for scale.
When is the last time you saw an old balance scale like this?
When I made aliyah to Israel in 1968 the sellers in markets were still using them to weigh and price your fruits and vegetables.
Soon digital scales took over. 

This old seller wouldn't have it any other way, though.
He sits in the Beer Sheva shuk, in the almost-all Bedouin part of the market, and wastes for customers.
He offers a mishmash of sewing thread, hand shears for shearing sheep, matches, and used containers.
Bedouin who live in unrecognized villages, those not on the national electric grid, need jerrycans to transport kerosene for their generators.
Oh, and next to some spices or some kind of seeds are packets of Pertixine, a powder for the control of mites and lice on poultry and animals.

Our guide (you see his hand) on this fascinating Jane's Walk tour through both parts of the market told us not to be fooled by the old man's humble appearance.
Turns out that in the 1960s he was a top gashash in the army.
In the IDF only Bedouin are gashashim--trackers, reconnaissance scouts--because they know the land and the desert like the proverbial back of their hand.
.