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It's just an old hammer
Topic Started: Jan 26 2006, 01:44 AM (199 Views)
Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
I'm building a new checkout counter for one of my video stores. I spent most of today working on it. Customers would come and go, most of them making a friendly comment to me about how hard I was working, or that it looked good, or something along those lines, just being friendly. Being the charming, charismatic people person I am.... :D I responded in kind. But one fellow stood out from all the rest. He asked me why I didn't get a better hammer. Apparently he felt my old beat up hammer just wasn't up to the job. The handle is wood, and it's warped a little. One claw is broken off about a third of the way down. The hammer head is black from age, and in general it's a sad looking hammer. But my hammer has soul.

I called my grandfather Pop. Pop left Tennessee in the late 40s to go to work in the Caterpillar factory in Peoria Illinois. On the side, he did carpentry work to earn more money. When I was less than a year old, my father left my mother, and Pop drove from Peoria to get us and take us back to Illinois to live with him and my grandmother. I don't remember that of course, nor do I remember much about the stepfather I ended up with who moved us to Chicago. But I remember Pop coming to Chicago to get my mother and I and take us back to Peoria when *that* one left as well.

Pop came to fill the shoes of the father I never had. He would take me with him on his carpentry jobs as his "helper". That meant I held onto the end of a board when he sawed the end off. When my mother decided she wanted to move back to Tennessee, Pop loaded us into his car and drove us back. He owned a little farm, 75 acres, with an old delapidated house on it. It was all he could give us, but it was enough. He told us that when he retired in a few years he would come back to live on the farm with us and build a new house.

He moved back when I was in the 7th grade. The first thing he did was begin building that new house, and once again I got to be his "helper". On our first trip to the lumber yard, he bought me a hammer. He said "Boy, a man can't make it through life without a good hammer." I was proud of that hammer. The two of us worked all summer and built a new house, and I drove a lot of nails with that hammer. The next year he built my mother a house of her own, with me as his helper. Just the two of us.

Everyone knew and respected Pop. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke you'd better listen, and you knew that if he said it it *would* happen. He was known for his word being like money in the bank. He kept his word. So when he told my uncle that he was going to build him a house too, I knew that me and my hammer would be driving a lot more nails. When he told me I was like a son to him, I believed him. And when he told me he wanted me to have his farm when he was gone, I knew that would happen too. I knew that farm meant a lot to him, and for him to want me to have it meant that I had earned his respect. It was a great honor, a serious responsibility. I knew I had to live up to his trust in me.

High school rolled around, Pop was getting older, so our house building days ended. I put away my hammer and went on to do what high school kids do. College, a music career that took off, and wild wouldn't be strong enough to describe things - or me. But through all the ups and downs, Pop never lost his faith in me.

And I loved him with all my heart. You can't get through life without a good hammer, remember - and he was the hammer that shaped me into a man. In his later years his pleasure in life was driving his old truck around over his farm, and growing strawberries. His farm was a lot bigger though, because as land came up for sale around his farm I was buying it up and giving it to him. All together I bought another 550 acres or so, just so he could drive his truck around it, checking fences, stuff like that. He took great pride in that land, and he considered taking care of it to be a serious responsibility. It gave him purpose, a reason to feel needed.

But oh, he was needed. Every time I pick up that old hammer I can feel his hand guiding me as I swing it. I just can't imagine trying to build something without that.

So no - I don't need a better hammer. They don't make hammers like mine very often.
Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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mirabilis
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Junior Carp
And they don't make Pops like yours anymore.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
May others tell such stories of us when we are gone. I can't imagine any greater accomplishment than having been that shaping force for a kid.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
I've often said that when I die, about the only thing I want carved on my tombstone is, "He was a good Christian man".

Being from the South, I can understand exactly what Larry meant about the land. Or tools. Or guns.

These are the things that are passed on from parents to children, the things that make up a lot of the long line of life.
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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Friday
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Larry your stories always make me cry. This time I nearly choked on my yogurt.
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