One sunny afternoon in mid-May of 1981, I was in the middle of framing a house in Fountain Hills, Arizona. I found that I had too many loose tools I kept having to throw into the back of the truck. I needed toolboxes.
So I cut up some scrap plywood and lumber and made a set of two sturdy wooden toolboxes. Everything fit in them, and it was easy to throw them into the back of the truck. I didn’t know it at the time, but those toolboxes stayed with me for a long time kept my tools over the years.
I just went through the tools and most of them are rusted out, mostly from the salty air in San Diego. The boxes were with me everywhere I have lived since and had their place in every garage. I think I never fully cleared them out and cleaned them up.
Now, thirty years almost to the day, I realized that I no longer needed those tools, and they were obsolete or defunct anyway. I didn’t need the toolboxes any longer. I used the same tools that built them to take them apart.
The old framing hammer that looks like it came from the middle ages, was shiny and new when I used it to make the boxes. It’s staying with me.
The boxes, however, are gone now after thirty years of loyal service.
Just don’t use those tools on yourself. You’re not that much different from a box. This is the closest you have come to a suicide note, Norbie. Why are you dismantling your past?
Your comment caused me to edit my post. It was not meant to be morbid. Not to worry.
Wait until I get to the post where I disband 30 years of collected books out of a dozen boxes that are piling up in my garage. Talk about dismantling?
No, picture me as a through hiker on the Appalachian Trail, shedding the heavy objects I have no use for anymore to lighten the load like Katz in A Walk in the Woods. Have you read “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson?
Hey, I was joking. I wonder what you removed? I should try to find a google snapshot of the original page. What a weird technological world we live in these days!
I have not read “A Walk in the Woods,” but I did just pick up “Lone Survivor.” As soon as the one recommendation is done, I’ll turn to the other. As always–thanks!