Last week I wasted $19.00, but I have to admit I'm feeling pretty good about it.
Here's the deal. My father died a few months ago and I've been cleaning out his shop, little by little. It's an emotional task, sorting through the evidence of a life well spent. In addition, Dad was kind of the ultimate handyman, resulting in a stunning assortment of bolts, gears, screws, and some doodads I haven't been able to identify. I'm spending all my spare time sorting and labeling, not to mention reminiscing. You might see that as a waste of time, but I live ten miles from the closest hardware store. More times than I'd like to number, I've killed an hour or so running to town to buy a $1.00 bolt or screw. That's not going to be a problem going forward.
The process is complicated by the fact that he had every tool in the world. I have about half that many, so combining the two is a certain amount of bother.
My latest trip down memory lane involved our Caterpillar Challenger. It was the biggest tractor we ever owned – basically a bulldozer except with rubber tracks and a good cab. I was smitten the first time I saw one. It was relatively compact for such a powerful machine, but everything was just so solid and... dense. I always had the feeling that it had been whittled out of one solid piece of steel. In the decade or so that we owned it, I don't remember it ever breaking down and there were no parts purchases except for air and oil filters. When we stopped farming and sold the equipment we weren't going to need anymore, it was on the auction. I hated to sell it, but it didn't have a power take-off or a three-point hitch. The only thing it was good for was pulling extremely heavy objects as fast as I wanted to go. I can be kind of a whimsical guy, but not quite whimsical enough to keep something that big and expensive around just in case I needed to pull out a tree stump every other year. So, on the auction it went.
When I packed up Dad's wrenches that we'd used when we worked on it, I discovered the inch and a half wrench was missing. I'm not sure how we lost it, since it was about the size of a baseball bat, but I searched everywhere and couldn't find it.
That wasn't a real problem, because there’s literally no bolt on the farm big enough to need it, but I had made a rack for the wrench set and there was a gaping hole just to the right of the 1 5/8 wrench. I tried to avoid looking at it, but yesterday I was in a hardware store and found myself in the wrench aisle.
And there it was. Actually, there were two for sale. One was $19.00 and the other was $57.00. I've always believed in buying good tools, but how good did a wrench I was never going use need to be?
I bought the cheaper one and tried to sneak it out of the store without my wife seeing it.
The guilt got to me and I confessed to my wife that night. She didn’t seem as shocked by my frivolity as I was, so that made me feel better.
Later that night I hung up the wrench, and I have to admit it looked good.
Damn good.
Copyright 2024 Brent Olson