Midnight Mutterings | Tools

What can be better than a tool that works well? That makes a task easier? That makes a repair possible by a mere mortal that would be hard, perhaps impossible, without it? I particularly love small elegant tools that fit so nicely in my hand. I love my needle nose pliers which were a gift long ago. I haven’t used used them lately, but appreciate knowing they are there when I need them next. I even like their name. I once bought a house that had a basement full of antique tools. There were block planes and saws, large, small and tiny. Cans of nails, screws and bolts lined the shelves and shears and snips hung from peg boards. There were tools I had never seen before, most notably a brace and bit that you held in place with your chest. (Kind of a breast plate instead of a hand-hold to keep it steady while you drilled.)

I gave away a lot of the tools I was too inexperienced to use myself, notably scary scythes and mallets of all sizes and materials. There were a few ancient power tools that didn’t work, but mostly hand tools were there. I can’t say I made anything beautiful or particularly useful in that well-equipped basement from the forties, but somehow those tools gave me a lot of pleasure, maybe more than what was upstairs in the kitchen from the same era. I do love the big flour sifter in a cabinet, but I never filled it with flour and I’ve never made a pie of any kind. I do use an old electric hand mixer sometimes, even though it is too heavy for balance and ease. I just like the idea of something used long ago by someone I never knew.

Have been thinking lately about tools and something that happened once in a classroom. Those K-8 students are long grown now, and I wonder it this event affected them as much as it did me, or even if they ever recall it at all. I can’t help hoping it changed their thinking/feeling, at least a little.

I had invited one of the dads to visit the class to introduce a new unit of study in our language arts program. He was a local handyman, among other things, as well as a poet. A tall man, well over six feet, and clearly strong, confident and competent. And gentle. He walked into the classroom at the appointed time carrying the largest tool box I’ve ever seen. I’ll call him John here as I don’t have his permission to tell this story, or know if he even remembers it. Haven’t seen him in a long time.

So John sets the tool box down on a table in front of the class and opens it without comment and takes out the biggest pipe wrench, also the largest, I’ve ever seen. John holds it up and tells the students what it’s called and what it can do and shows them how it makes him strong enough to do a particular job. He repeats his demonstration with other tools from his box and explains his appreciation of well-made tools and what they can do. He says a little about how to care for particular tools. He has saws and drills, wrenches and pliers, power and hand tools. Large and small. Of course he has a collection of hammers and screwdrivers. Tape measures and carpentry tools I don’t know the names of. Ordinary tools, you might find in any house.

He then says a few more words about tools and what they can help people build and repair. Then he says something to the effect that while the tools in his box can help built and fix a lot of things, they can’t do everything.

‘For example,’ he says, ‘These tools can’t fix hurt feelings, can’t express hope and fear. For that you need another type of tool.’

John lifts out the upper tray of the toolbox and sets it aside. He takes a small notebook and a stub of pencil from the bottom of the toolbox.

‘For things like that,’ he continues, ‘you need these.’ He uses the pad and pencil to write a small poem, which he reads to the class. I wish I could remember the words. The students are completely quiet as they get out their own paper and pencils and start writing.