Vise

I’ve been telling people it was pathogenesis, but I did a little research and that’s incorrect.  

The correct term is mitosis.  

Here’s the deal. Over thirty years of farming, I accumulated a lot of tools; in his 97 years my father accumulated more. After he died, I cleaned out his shop and added his stash to mine.  

In a stroke of good fortune, our son has half his garage free of encumbrance and expressed an interest in getting back to his tool and die maker roots.  

Last week I hooked onto a trailer and loaded it with much of my excess equipment. A TIG welder, a wire welder, chop saw, grinder...it was a lot.  

The first thing I put on the trailer was a welding table my dad made, with a leg vise attached to it.  

If you don’t know what a leg vise is, don’t worry about it.  

Anyway, we unloaded the whole trailer, creating two complete shops out of one.  

This is not pathogenesis but mitosis.  

We were standing around, admiring our accomplishments and our son looked at the vise and said, “The first thing I ever welded I used that vise.”  

I said, “The first thing I ever welded I used that vise.”  

I cast my memory back sixty-five years and said, “You know, I bet the first thing your grandfather ever welded, he used that vise.”  

When I was a small child, my dad had a tiny shop in a little Quonset-type building, just north of our house. One of my earliest memories is looking out an upstairs window and seeing the flickering light of the welder going long into the night.  

I clearly remember the vise clamped to a wooden table just to the left of the door. It looked old to me then; my guess is my dad bought it used or from an auction.  

I’ve often thought that one of the reasons my father liked spending money on tools was not only because they were tax deductible, but also because there had been several decades when there were a frustrating number of projects he couldn’t bring to fruition because he couldn’t afford the tools needed. Later on, he made up for that. Keep in mind, this was a guy who bought a backhoe when he was eighty.  

I had barely gotten home when my son sent a photo of Number 5, home from school inspecting the vise. A short while later he had tightened a penny in it and was whaling away with a hammer, bending it over double.  

Like you do.  

It just made for a great day. One of the many ways I don’t fit easily into this world is that I’m not a collector, I’m a user. No judgment here, but I’ve never really understood people who buy stuff just to look at it. Books they'll never read, guns they'll never fire, thimbles they'll never...whatever you do with thimbles. Out of curiosity I looked online, and apparently 100-year-old vises are actually worth a little money. I imagine there are even some vise collectors out there. I could have sold it or left it in a corner of my shop to gain value. But why do that when instead I can have the enjoyment of seeing Number 5 pound on a penny clamped in his great-grandfather's vise, working in a shop that didn't even exist a few hours before?  

Because of mitosis. 

Copyright 2024 Brent Olson