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Re-Tooling

The Source

My friend Rick always tells me, “The proper tool for the proper job.” I usually answer, “Anybody got a hammer?” Rick has an advantage on me. He’s a carpenter…not just a carpenter but one of those skilled craftsmen who other people seek out when they need some really fancy work done. My buddy is a perfectionist and he will not sleep until the two corners of cabinet come together in precisely the exact angle, and when he fits a table into a breakfast nook you’ll not be able to slide a human hair under the legs. This is the very reason that Rick and I seldom work together. I recently lent him a hand when he was struggling to finish a new house. My simple job was to sand and varnish several hundred yards of molding. Rick showed me how to do the job then went upstairs to do something that required brains, and when he returned a couple hours later I asked him how I was doing. He’s a good friend and often has to weigh his propensity for kindness against his desire to get the job done right. He looked at my work, sighed, and then said, “Well, it depends. Did you mean to do it correctly?” I got the hint and from then on confined my work to picking shingle nails up out of the yard. The rear of his work van resembles a tool factory designed by Martha Stewart. Row after row of spotless tools line the walls of the vehicle and every instrument of construction absolutely shines. The proper tool for the proper job. Rick has an even larger collection of implements in his garage at home and no doubt he’s stashed an extra set of everything in his basement. Every time I look at my friend’s assembly of gadgets I think of my toolbox. Every tool I own is stuffed into a single kitchen drawer along with every light bulb in my possession, every battery, ball of string, duct tape, and kitchen match. My entire fix-it world is confined to a single small container that slides out right underneath the dish rack. That’s it. Rick once visited my house without his magic van and I asked him how to straighten my screen door so it was at the same angle as the rest of the house. Actually, the screen hung square to the world, but my house is crooked. It started leaning toward St. Louis about twenty years ago and it sinks about an inch a year. I plan to move before it completely tips over. So Rick looked at the door and told me to go get a socket wrench. I didn’t have a socket wrench. “Then a crescent wrench will do.” Sorry. Don’t own one. “A set of regular wrenches?” Nope. “Then how to you fix things?” I don’t him that I didn’t. That’s why my screen was dangling. He found that with a set of pliers and a lot of straining you can fix a screen door. After all, he was using one-third of my entire tool collection…a hammer, a screwdriver, and those pliers. Actually, I broke the screwdriver several years ago trying to use it as a hammer which I’d misplaced, but I’ve kept it just so I can say I own three tools. Rick found none of this funny. He couldn’t believe that a grown man could exist without a proper set of tools and he told me that he’d buy me a few things the next time he got to town. I told him he’d be wasting his money because one of the first requirements of owning tools is knowing how to use them. I refuse to take all the blame in this great gap between Rick’s knowledge and mine. I may be a bumbling idiot with absolutely no fine motor skills, but in my book Rick is way too picky. He and I used to sing in a gospel group and in fact he probably has the finest voice I’ve ever worked with, but sometimes his carpentry skills would get in the way of his music. We’d often be playing in some faraway country church and Rick would loose his place in the lyrics to the song because while singing he’d be looking up and inspecting the masonry work on the church’s ceiling. After the service I’d say, “Boy, you really blew the words in that third song,” and he’d replay, “But did you see that crack along the north wall? If I had the right tool….” And so we exist as friends, the Frick and Frack of carpentry. Rick measures, cuts, plans, and produces a quality product. I grab whatever’s handy and bang until it either fits or breaks. He once looked at my southward tilting home and said, “You know, I’ve never told anyone this before, but you’re going to outlive your house.” I took this to mean that I was healthy.