Dan Anderson
Tools wear out and tools get broken, but there are times when it’s appropriate to retire tools that are still in good shape.
Here are some tools I’ve retired, and the reasons why:
• When I first started turning wrenches 40-plus years ago, I didn’t have much money for tools. That Christmas, Dad bought me a 32-ounce Craftsman wood-handled ball-pein hammer. It was my only hammer for the first year or so, until I could invest in some poly-handled hammers that stood up to my abuse better than that oft-abused, wood-handled gift. Dad is gone, and that hammer, with its grease-soaked, battered wooden handle, is retired to my home toolbox. It always feels good in my hand.
• I was pretty sure when my son was a teenager that he never listened to a word I said. Till one Christmas, when he gave me a $15 battery terminal clamp puller as a gift. I had mentioned several months earlier while helping him work on his car that “it would be nice to have a clamp puller.” It’s one of my most-valued tools, not for what it does (and it is a very handy and useful tool) but what it symbolized when it was given.
• My wife has for years bought for me as Christmas and birthday gifts “boring” shop accessories. “Boring” to her because she doesn’t “get” tools, but I think of her thoughtfulness every time I sit on my rolling shop stool or roll under a machine on the top-of-the-line mechanic’s creeper she gave me. I haven’t officially retired them, but should, because no new stool or creeper would mean as much if I lost the originals and had to replace them.
Some tools are more than tools. They’re symbols and memories that happen to be part of our job, and earn a special place in our toolbox, shop or maybe on the wall.
Dan Anderson is a part-time freelance writer and full-time heavy equipment mechanic with more than 20 years of experience working out of service trucks. He is based in Bouton, Iowa.