Do you have a septic system, or are you on city sewer?
Does your yard have a sprinkler system, or none?
If he’s on a septic system, my guess is it’s a tank porthole lifter. Those usually have a concrete plug with a loop of metal formed into the concrete. A little pick like this would lift it free of the dirt around the tank without delay.
But if he’s not on a septic system, my other guess is that it was for turning a sprinkler valve and the tool stood in a corner, thus the worn area on the end of the hook, where it stood in the corner for many years, being used 5x a week…
My guess is the second one, since it’s so worn and seems likely to have stood outside in a corner a lot, at the ready.
Our meter reader has a similar device. He cruises by on a small scooter. He has a strap connected to the handle (where the tire material is on this example) that hooks to the back of the scooter.
He’ll cruise up to the meter cover, grab the tool, lift the cover, enter the data in his key-pad, drop the cover back down, reattach the handle to the scooter, and zoom off to the next cover.
Looks a bit like the custom hooks Dairymen use to drag stacks of milk crates around. You hook the bottom crate, lift the stack of milk, and pull with your other hand on the top of the stack. Lifting the front edge allows the entire stack to slide.
However, the septic tank and water meter responses above make more sense for something found in a backyard.
How about a floppy shovel? The flappy things for beating out grass fires. The tire thingy could be the remains of the flap, and the hook could be for hanging it up, or for pulling things out of the fire.
@hector_plasma Yeah, that was my thought. A homemade transom latch opener. Hook end to to open the window, rubber end to close. You can still buy them, but the ones at Home Depot are a lot prettier.
I like the idea that it is to open and close transom windows, because that white accretion on the end could have been a coating to keep it from scratching the pull ring. But it looks more like a tool I use to pull reinforcement metal mesh up when pouring concrete flatwork. The screen gets driven to the bottom of the pour when the concrete comes in, and you reach down there with this hook and lift it up so it is in the middle of the slab where it belongs. Then, you rinse it off and toss it in your tool bag. Just a thought.
My only contribution is that it looks fairly heavy. The central shaft appears to be a solid metal bar. So there is no way it is meant to push anything open that is overhead. It’s too heavy. It’s not for propping a window or awning open. Something like that would be made of a lighter material.
I thought so too, but I’ve seen more than a few of them, and they generally have either a fork or a spade on the tip, for prying up the cover and turning the valve.
Okay folks, I’m going to make my pitch, back it up with some well chosen words, and let you guys shoot the theory down. It’s a homemade tool for pulling down the roll-down security grate on a storefront, with some very high windows.
Think bodega, or clothing store, something about 10 feet high. The shaft is lined w/ tape because as you’re pulling down, you’d need to grasp until it was within reach, and the hook would be painted white so you could see it in the darkness, underneath an awning or early morning, against the black of the grate. The little rubber bit on the end? Looks pretty shiny to me, but just the tip, almost as if it got rubbed by being pinched repeatedly between finger and thumb. So, used by someone short who needed an extra couple of inches to pull down the grate, shift the grip to the ring, pull further, grab the grate, and pull it down almost all the way to the floor. Maybe you throw it in just under the grate for opening up in the morning, maybe you take it with you home.
There, that’s my bit. How it ended up in the backyard? That’s another story.
This look a lot like a railroad tie plate “picker/puller”. They apparently look different now, but they looked very close to that back when I used one on the tie gangs…
Otherwise I would vote for manhole cover lifter.
-or- one of the above that has been modified to hang somewhere permanently like a rig to hold a storm window open, etc.
It’s a tool used by meter readers. The hook is for opening the access door for in ground utility boxes. The rubber rubber part was used, with the help of some saliva, to clean the meter to see the numbers.
I was a SoCal Gas meter reader for a few months during college. The veteran meter readers would often carry a tool nearly identical to this.
