Sunday, March 28, 2010

Cleaning out the work shop

Today I was watching Don lower a green plastic drain pipe into a trailer with  a John Deere tractor. The pipe was maybe thirty two inches in diameter by twelve feet long. One end was sawed off at about a forty five degree angle. The other, the factory bell end, is the female end of a joint.They are just like the joints on a stalk of bamboo. Suddenly, I'm standing there watching Don load the world's largest cutting of Lucky Bamboo into a trailer.  I guess these days a fellow might need a really big piece of lucky bamboo.

Standing at an old work bench later. I"m cleaning off a lot of small but vastly handy tools, bits, drivers, small pressure and vacuum gauges, parital rolls of teflon plumbing tape, probably a gazillion screws, bolts and sundry other fasteners, many small bits of wire, and, and, and. There was about thirty or forty years worth of  accumulated small odds, ends, time savers and sometimes essential little things that Uncle Bill had on the back of his work bench. He died back last November.  We still do some work on boats and stuff out of there, but we also figure on having to move out of the rented space to make room for the new owners - like any time now. So....Sorting through all these small, dusty objects of utility, I can't help but hear Bill saying " you're going to want to have that right where you can get ahold of it when you need it."