Instead tools show up, one at a time, bought to do some particular job, to remove some troublesome bolt, and once used, are added to the boxes and racks of other grimy things, perhaps never to be used again, or perhaps to be just the savior that is needed on some later job. In this way I have accumulated hundreds of tools, among which are the indispensable, the vise grips, the dikes, the needle nose, the ball peen and channel locks, but also those tools I know I will never use again, the piston ring compressor, the valve spring compressor, the tie rod separator.
Yet for some reason, even those that no longer have any purpose to me remain lovingly in their drawer or on their hook on the wall. I can not part with any of them. They served me when I needed them and have earned their place. Among my favorites are those I made myself, such as the tack hammer I made in metal shop when just a boy, or the “firsts”, such as my first socket set and ratchet, bought with saved up dimes and quarters. I couldn’t know then, as a boy, that half inch sockets would be less useful than three eighths, or that twelve point sockets would be less useful than six point sockets, and so now I rarely use that first set. But I held many bolts and turned many nuts with those clumsy sockets and I still like the heft of that first ratchet, even if I lift it only to look for others more nimble.
And what of those tools of unknown origin? I can no longer say when or where I got those dozens of loose sockets, some black with age. Perhaps at a flea market or yard sale? In a trade? I know I bought one set of quarter inch sockets from a young man who drove up one summer’s night to the gas station where I worked and who was selling tools to raise bail for his brother. Or so he said. Maybe he had just pilfered them himself. I look at those sockets sometimes and think that I should have just given him the pittance I paid so that he could keep his tools. I wouldn’t want to be forced to sell mine.
But in a way, I think that perhaps that would be better than the fate that lies in store for them. I can say from experience that it is a sad thing to walk into a silent shop of tools when its owner has died and the tools gather dust, unwanted. A plane just looks like a dusty plane when lying on its side, and no one can see the shelves and tabletops it has smoothed over the years. My grinder and drill press probably don’t look any different than anybody else’s but were witness those hundreds of times I held a piece of work to the light after using them and got that feeling of satisfaction that comes from just the right touch to the wheel.
And what about my table saw? It’s not a particularly good one, but has nevertheless let me shape my ideas into wood. For dozens of years it has let me rip to order, shave and pare that last sixteenth of an inch, put a slight bevel on an otherwise overbearing right angled corner. Will it sit at auction, overlooked due to its humble origins and wear? Be pitched into a landfill, deemed useless? To tell you the truth, if it weren’t already mine, I’m not sure I would buy it myself. There are safer saws nowadays, chock-a-block with nifty features. Its time has passed. Perhaps, in a way, an old man’s old saw is a metaphor for the man himself.
Some days I wonder what will happen to my tools.