Tools-Are-Us

 

Don’t get me wrong…I love tools!

It’s a guy thing.

I love what tools can do!

I have many inscrutable tools in a black cabinet with tiny drawers that my sons gave me on father’s day.  Certainly fathers should know what to do with all this stuff!  It’s endemic or innate to fatherhood…

I just don’t always know, personally, as a challenged father and senior male, how to hold them in the proper aspect and what to do with them in the appropriate instance.

I understand torque…it’s a dance favored by Miley Cyris…but what do I do with a torque wrench?  (torque wench?)

We have lots of ball-peen hammers around.  Invariably, they are the wrong hammer for the job.  I have struggled to pull out a nail with a ball-peen hammer.

And who was Phillips with his obstinate screws?  Certainly a Communist, a protégé of the Metric System fomented by dark folks from Rumania.

I was the youngest son in a farm family and my older brothers were favored with tractor work and tools.

They handed me…a hoe.

I’ve always suspected I was an orphan from Puerto Rican origins.  No racist inference here.  Puerto Ricans have risen in our society while I have not.  I admire them.

Some sadistic family member gave me a 750’ row to hoe when I was at an impressionable age.  I worked diligently after school and on Saturdays.  But the weeds grew up behind me as I plodded along.  Friends and loved ones stopped by at the holidays.  How’s Mark doing on his row?  He’s coming along…he’s coming along…  In the end, I sought to escape this punishing and unrewarding nursery industry by majoring in English at The Ohio State University.  I guess…however…I’m still there.  In my mind…that 750’ row and the weeds will follow me to the end of my days.

But here’s the thing…my oldest brother stopped by to fix a tractor this weekend.  He showed me the broken part.  A starter? Why is he showing it to me? Surely we can fix it with a torque wrench!  A hoe?  A Miley Cyris?

I admire his ability to return our ailing Kubota to constructive industry.

Perhaps he can do the same for this aging hermano!!!

 

Mark Gilson