Tools

My father's basement workshop exhaled sawdust, paint blotches, brush bristles, fresh and old honeycomb, and fumes roiling of oil and thinner. Always a tinkerer, he enjoyed his tools -- small ones: hammers, saws (including a beautiful antique one with decorated wood handle), screw drivers, ratchets, pliers, vises, planes, screws, nails, hinges, and the like; and large ones: table saw, table drill, lathe, welding equipment. An engineer by training, Daddy created objects for his own pleasure and our use. My home today bears witness to his creativity: a chandelier turned from a storm-felled tree in the front yard, four tables, a copy of the metal Robin Hood that hung from our driveway lamp post, and one decorative, humorous critter.

One of my brothers is also an engineer by training who works as a businessman, directing the same business my father co-founded some 62 years ago. His workshops have always been immaculate, with barely any disorder or splatters and splotches on his floors or surfaces. His tools are carefully cataloged on peg board, aligned as neatly as entries by an expert accountant in an official record. Like Daddy, he loves his tools, but unlike Daddy's, his are orderly and locatable by others.

Lately, I have been thinking about my own tools and my own habits of tool-keeping. I am more like my father than my brother: I cannot keep them organized neatly. Like both, however, I love my tools. Although I have never been able to afford the best ones, which both of them seemed to do, I respect my tools, especially on days like this one when I use them.

Good tools -- the right tools for specific tasks --, whether top-of-the-line or just short, make quality work possible and working joyful.I love my tools.