Mild Gloat
David Miller from Iowa
>So my Dad bangs on the door about 4 hours ago and says, �Mrs. Fitch (a long time neighbor who was old when I was a kid in the 1960s) is off to the assisted living and she wants us to clean out her garage and we can keep any of her late husband�s tools and fishing tackle and anything else we want.� It went without saying that I had dibs on the tools and he had dibs on the fishing tackle. So off we go. Three pickup loads of storm windows, rusted garden tools, car wheels, and decrepit patio furnture later and we�re finally to the prize � a truly ancient jumbo size toolbox, three old tackle boxes and half a dozen fishing poles.
But alas, the toolbox wasn�t stuffed with #1s or #42s - instead, a half dozen no name iron planes (a couple pretty old though), the obligatory array of braces and rusted bits, a couple termite-eaten transitionals, at least 50 pounds of old wrenches and mechanics tools, a number of saws, and more masonry tools than a guy really needs. The keepers (besides a complete masons set) were a decent Stanley #118 plane, a very nice Simonds split-nut saw (looks like a 7 �, but it�s not numbered despite a very legible etch), a good D-8 saw with the 1896-1917 medallion and a choice apple wood handle, a couple cast iron hacksaws, and a pile of non-collectable but very usable pipe wrenches, grease guns, crescent wrenches etc. The toolbox was completely dry rotted, but it does have some nice hardware I�ll keep. My dad came away with a bunch of ancient padlocks, a dozen or so old but fairly common fishing plugs and a smattering of poles and old reels. My Mom went in for coffee with Mrs. Fitch on her last day in her home of 54 years, and she was glad she knew where her stuff was going.