My Dad’s Nurture and Admonition …the Venerable Tack Hammer
- My father was a fascinating person. Not just because he was Dad, but because he came packaged with a lot of knowledge, lore, and experience — all of which he shared with me with his heart and soul. He was not perfect. Maybe that’s why I identified with him?
The photo shows my brother on the left, my father in the background, and me and my two young children at a Christmas Day get-together at my Dad and Mom’s house. This father of mine must have been just as excited as I was to see these new little family members, one just three months old. He always called me “Shorty,” even when I was a middle-aged person visiting him years later when he was on his way to the next life. It began in the beginning, when I was newborn.
When I could get out of the crib (earlier than my parents would have preferred) I was a shadow. Where my Dad was, I was there. If he was shaving, I was watching, and if he was putting on cuff links I was there seeing how it worked. If he was digging a hole or fixing the car, there I was being curious and asking questions. When I was about three I became his little apprentice in the shop and I was his ardent side-kick right up until I last saw the house with my father in it when I moved from Pennsylvania to Washington State in 1973.
The small hammer first. Be careful of your fingers. You start the nail with a tap. You hold the nail straight and be sure to hit is on the head. And I did, and I found out about missing.
There were plenty of pieces of wood in the vice with a small girl perched on a tall stool learning to hammer nails.
Then it was the screwdriver. But that meant also the hand crank drill with it’s drill bits.
So many drill bits… all lined up on the wall behind the workbench, each in a drilled hole the right size for each bit, standing in a graduated row. How to put the bit in… how to make it stay…which way to wind the crank…how to keep it lined up straight. I remember these lessons to this day.
I asked him once for “Hole Nails”! He was astonished to find out I meant no, not nails, Daddy, but that kind, you see, with a slotted hole on top. And the screwdriver. A big one. To screw the “hole nail” into the drilled hole. Big accomplishment.
And on it went, gradually to the lathe he had set up toward the back of the shop. It had a sanding wheel on the end of it that spun when you turned it on. Never never never turn it on until you are sure everything is safe, especially your hands and hair. Always wait for him before turning it on.
I remember the coils of wood and also sometimes metal that would come off that lathe — watching it bite into a hard object and scratch a shape into the revolving material before my very eyes.
I dreamed about the grinding wheel today, at 78, and how he would shape a piece of metal, or sharpen an edge of a tool. He used a jar of water — often grey with metal filings — but always there to dip the hot metal in and cool it off so it would not get too hot and break or bend. Annealing.
The same thing with the blow torch. Make the metal hot, but then sizzz into the water jar so it didn’t get work hardened. I was grinding this afternoon here in my own shop, with a small Dremel tool, dipping my material into water frequently to keep it from burning either the material or the burr.
What little girl had such a vocational education as I did? It was truly an apprenticeship that went on for all the years I lived there. When I shopped for presents for my father it usually was about the shop. When I was little with ten cents to spend, it was for a ball of twine or a box of carpet tacks. When I was a teen, it was coping saw blades and a contribution toward his new drill press.
When he finally moved from that house he had to let go of his tools and his shop. He brought a small toolbox out to the west coast where he and mom moved to be near me when their health began to fail. And there were the precious remnants he couldn’t let go of; some of my favorite tools.
The tack hammer! The drill bits! The hole nails! A compass! A square!An awl. A hand made chisel for making holes for door knobs! His very very long wind-up tape measure he used for measuring rooms. The special magnifying glass for seeing tiny things. More than tools, there are conventions. The small boxes labeled brads, nails, wood screws, metal screws, junk, washers, clips, wire, etc. His were filed in cigar boxes in an old mail case at the end of the shop, with their ends painted white and his own inked letters saying what they were. I can still hear him saying, “Shorty, get me the carpet tacks over there….they’re about waist high on the left.”
These things I still have in my own tool box now. There are not many old ladies with workshops in their garage, in their sitting room, and under their bed, I’ll bet. But I am one who loves the tools, and the making of things, and the smell of hardware, and the lettering on the tack hammer. I don’t hit my fingers when I drive nails either. Or turn electrical things on unless I am very sure everything is safe. I am “Shorty”..the lucky one!
Originally published at cowbird.com. ©Susan G Holland
