11
In the Fall of Nineteen Seventy-One, when I was seven, my not as
older brother was taking a different bus home from the High School
while I took the earlier bus from the elementary/middle school
building. As a result, I'd be dropped off at the grocery store,
check in with my mother who was working there until after four in the
afternoon, then walk across the hayfield to the family home.
Officially, I was then looked over by my not as older brother, but in
reality, he didn't get home until just before four, assuming he
wasn't staying late for a high school activity. This gave me about
an hour to get into trouble by myself at home... I mean enjoy
my own company.
At first I'd get home and take out a large bowl and pour in a few
handfuls of potato chips, then go the porch where I would sit down
and admire the September sunset while spoiling my dinner. As October
rolled around, I had grown bored of this and decided to use my time
exploring the house. Much of it I already knew, but the basement
could always be better known.
The house's basement was actually built into the bedrock, some of it
had been chipped away, but a third of the bedrock still remained and
sloped down from the 'back side' of the basement to the floor, though
it was the front side of the house. This left two thirds of the
space remaining with one half being for the freezer case, work sink,
and power panels. The other side was the workshop.
Within the workshop half was all my family's tools, including the
drill press and table saw, two large work benches (which were
typically covered in abandoned half-done projects), and a selection
of various old cabinets which held the hand tools and a small
selection of hand held power tools. I had tagged along and watched
as my father or eldest brother had worked down here on stuff and now
I had my chance for an up close and personal look. To stay out of
trouble each day, my cue was hearing the door of the house close
above, meaning someone was home and I'd pop-up from the basement. No
one ever asked why I was down there and no excuse needed to be given.
Opening up the cabinets revealed a great array of tools: Screw
drivers, hammers, push drills, wood planes, etc. The other cabinet,
though, held something unexpected, a nude picture of what could have
been a younger version of my mother. Posted on the inside of the
cabinet door itself, it looked like it was from a glossy magazine and
was in color. Was this actually a picture of my mother in her
pre-marriage days? Did my father keep it secreted away here to
remind himself of how she originally looked, from time to time? Or
had he seen this picture during his World War II service days,
clipped it out, then found my mother years later and pursued her as
she looked similar to the pin-up girl's picture he'd kept during the
years after the war? I never knew for sure, but I've always
wondered.
Then there was all the scrap material in the shop area, mostly wood,
but some metal. With the wood scraps, I'd practice with the tools,
drilling holes, either with a hand held push drill, or occasionally
with the drill press. The drill press I remembered from Bumpa's
house where it had been in his own basement before his stroke.
Essentially just a metal frame which grasped a hand held power drill,
it had knobs and handles to allow strictly measured drill depths for
anything a hand held power drill could bore. It was fun using the
little circular, toothed, tool-key to tighten and untighten drill
bits from the drill's 'chuck'. Then see how the various sized drill
bits and depths made various sized holes. I found I actually liked
the push drills better as they let you drill holes in different
directions than just down.
The table saw was more exciting, though, given its powerful motor and
reputation for danger. Before the age of saw blade guards, its metal
toothed circular blade peeked out from a slit in the center of the
table and you could use one of two cranks to raise the blade to
almost a full half circle, or lower it completely out of sight. The
other crank tilted the blade one way or the other for angled cuts.
And I just had to try out all the combinations of height and
angles with the pieces of scrap wood available! Keeping the
memory of Bumpa's unnaturally shortened fingers in mind, I was very
careful as I cut some boards in half and made groves in others. Yet,
with using all of these wood tools in the basement, it never occurred
to me to start a project of my own at this time...
With wood, that is.
Of the various scraps in the shop was electrical wiring, some
switches, and light bulb sockets. Knowing that electricity went
through light switches to turn lights on and off, I decided to figure
out how this worked for myself. As metal was involved with
electricity, I found an old red Radio Flyer bed that had long since
lost its wheels and pull handle. Upside down with the rim against
the table saw surface and the underside of the flatbed surface facing
up, I used the push drill to make some mounting holes for the switch
and the socket, then used the scrap wire to hook up between them,
cutting off the rubbery insulation to expose the metal before I
screwed the ends down. For the stretch from the power outlet to the
switch, I found the end of a power cord, with the two prongs on one
end and the two bare wires on the other, and mounted that to the
power switch as well. Plugging it in, the light lit up immediately
regardless of the switch position and I realized that only one side
of the wiring had to go through the switch for it to work. So I took
the screw driver to loosen the wires, and got a burst of sparks and
the screw driver flew out of my hand. Oh, yes, I thought, I
should unplug it first! Unplugged, I tried again, this time
putting the switch between one path of the wiring from the plug to
the light bulb socket, and the other path I just twisted the ends of
the two wires together. Plugged back in, this time the switch worked
perfectly to turn the light on and off.
With this project completed, I decided to try out the tin snips on
the metal Radio Flyer bed just to see if it would really cut through
it. It did, but was hard going so my original thought of cutting all
the way across was soon abandoned. As was my time in the
basement.
Having tried out all the tools and explored all the corners of the
shop area of the basement over the weeks, it was time to find
something new to get into trouble with. I considered exploring my
father's electronics work table and teach myself how to use the
soldering iron but I discovered Star Trek reruns on the Boston
UHF channel, instead...!
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