If I Had a Hammer

Today I accomplished my final end-of-season, post-camping task: thoroughly vacuuming out the bits of sand, rock, leaves, pine needles and mud that littered every surface in my car. I also scrubbed the inside of the windows, shined up the plastic interior, and then drove through the car wash down the street. My Subaru is a new woman now.

Another project was to dig out a bunch of tools from the basement and see if I could begin to loosen the bolts holding my towering, 150-year-old canopy bed together, in preparation for the arrival of a simple platform variety that doesn’t require mountain-climbing skills to ascend or mid-air leaps to exit.

Small suggested I get a guy friend or a handyman to disassemble everything for me, but I can’t stand asking for help. “But your bad back!” she rightfully worries. Still, I insist upon at least trying to do it myself. I hate the idea of having to ask some guy to come to my rescue. I’m proud, if not strong. I am also supremely stubborn—as is everyone in my family, perhaps my father most of all. 

When I was little, my favorite activity in the world was to hang out with Dad in his basement shop. As I’ve surely told you, for Christmas one year he built me my own miniature pine workbench, fully stocked with hacksaw, plane, c-clamp and more. He placed it at right-angles next to his own. We spent hours down there, fixing and creating things, side by side. Well, he was the one doing the real work, but I quietly and carefully observed his methods and learned from them. I wouldn’t call myself particularly competent as a result, but I do have determination.

Of course I still own that “Ginna Bench.” It survived my epic possession-purge. There was never any question that it would stay with me, and it always will.

So this afternoon I was in fact able to turn a few of the half-inch-diameter screws, with one exception. There’s a threaded bolt that’s nestled into a recess with inadequate room for an implement to get in and grab it. Neither pliers nor wrench could gain enough purchase to budge it. And the horizontal groove you see is too chewed up to obey a screwdriver.

With a chisel I widened that space a sliver but still couldn’t get a grip on the metal head. Finally, I positioned the business end of my biggest screwdriver against the bolt’s upper-right corner and pounded the handle hard toward the left with a heavy hammer—righty-tighty, lefty-loosey—hoping for the thing to unscrew a bit. Nope. Slam, slam, slam again, but not a trace of progress. My eye on the screwdriver tip to make sure it was still in place, I took one final, mighty swing. I’m disappointed to report that the blow missed its mark and landed instead on my knuckle.

Once the pieces of the new bed arrive, I’ll make another attempt to take apart the old one and haul the pieces into the basement. And put together the new one. Ha ha ha ha ha. Stay tuned.

This story demonstrates my particular challenges in the areas of coordination and grace, and reminds me of the time, years ago, when I lived alone with my kids on three acres in the country. My parents had given me two presents: a serrated butter knife and $100 toward a .22 caliber rifle to help me manage the rats that kept invading my well-house and gnawing on the wiring, leaving me without water.

I was happy about the practical new knife and decided to put it to use right away. In my eagerness, I slid the blade out of its protective plastic wrapper and managed to run the sharp edge firmly along my thumb, slicing it so deeply that I was still bleeding profusely half an hour later, with no sign of abatement. I even started to get faint after a while. I lived, but at that moment I made a critical decision: if I couldn’t be trusted around a butter knife, there was no way I was going to get myself a gun. 

As a result, I had to dispense with future rats with spring traps and then figure out what to do with the wee corpses afterwards. I actually like rats (except for the Norway kind) so it was a sad business. The worst moment came when I heard a clatter from inside the well-house and discovered an unfortunate rodent caught by its broken neck under the metal bar, still alive and struggling. I couldn’t stand to see it suffer, yet I had no idea what to do, since of course I had no weapon (aside from a butter knife) to put it out of its misery. In the end, the only possibility I came up with was to fill a bucket with water, plunge the poor creature in, and hold it under. I will never forget that trauma. I mean, it was surely more traumatic for the rat than for me, but let me tell you: mammals that need to breathe, even when they’re at death’s door, put up a mighty fight when you deprive them of that ability. It was truly horrible. I was a wreck for days and still haven’t quite gotten over it.

I wonder what I did spend that $100 on.