- Joined
- Mar 21, 2005
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- 3,355
I was at my grandmother's house today to put up some Christmas lights in the windows. I was searching around in the basement for a small pair of pliers and found something interesting.
My grandfather was someone who had many kinds of tools and did a lot of work with his hands, electrical work and woodwork for the most part. As such, he had tons (tons) of screws, bolts, bits, washers, fasteners, and the like. Pretty much all of this stuff is still in the basement where it had been at the time he passed away. To store and organize this large assortment of small pieces he reused lots of small household containers. Things like orange juice concentrate cans, little tins from throat lozenges, glass jars that artichoke hearts came in, peanut cans, tins for tobacco plugs, etc. However, there was one I came upon that made me think of knives. More specifically, the kind we talk about here in the Traditional section.
This was a container for an inner tube patch kit with branding from Camel cigarettes. I don't know what Gramp stored in it after the patch materials but I'm sure he kept it around since it was fairly sturdy and a handy size.
Looking at the instructions on the back I took note of the second sentence of number 2 which read, in part, "Spread cement out evenly, working well into pores of rubber with knife blade and scrape off surplus." I don't know exactly how old the kit is but it stood out to me how it was assumed that a person carried a knife. I got an image in my head of some old Case pen blade being used to spread rubber cement in the process of fixing a punctured tube.
I asked my grandmother if I could borrow the container to take some pictures of it for my own reference and she told me I could keep it. I think perhaps I'll put my Dad's old barlow knife in there and keep two memories in the same place.
-- Nate
My grandfather was someone who had many kinds of tools and did a lot of work with his hands, electrical work and woodwork for the most part. As such, he had tons (tons) of screws, bolts, bits, washers, fasteners, and the like. Pretty much all of this stuff is still in the basement where it had been at the time he passed away. To store and organize this large assortment of small pieces he reused lots of small household containers. Things like orange juice concentrate cans, little tins from throat lozenges, glass jars that artichoke hearts came in, peanut cans, tins for tobacco plugs, etc. However, there was one I came upon that made me think of knives. More specifically, the kind we talk about here in the Traditional section.
This was a container for an inner tube patch kit with branding from Camel cigarettes. I don't know what Gramp stored in it after the patch materials but I'm sure he kept it around since it was fairly sturdy and a handy size.
Looking at the instructions on the back I took note of the second sentence of number 2 which read, in part, "Spread cement out evenly, working well into pores of rubber with knife blade and scrape off surplus." I don't know exactly how old the kit is but it stood out to me how it was assumed that a person carried a knife. I got an image in my head of some old Case pen blade being used to spread rubber cement in the process of fixing a punctured tube.
I asked my grandmother if I could borrow the container to take some pictures of it for my own reference and she told me I could keep it. I think perhaps I'll put my Dad's old barlow knife in there and keep two memories in the same place.
-- Nate
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