The year of my eleventh birthday, I was doing my 2-weeks' duty helping out at my grandparents' farm (it was somewhat of a 'treat' to do this)... We'd gotten the last of the bales of that cutting put up, and no fences to mend, so I went down to grandpa's old machine shed to explore. I found tools scattered around the benches, and some buried in the dirt, others in the tractor and combine toolboxes, that were all rusty/crusty. i found seized pliers, jammed adjustables, oil cans that were hung up in the down position, screwdrivers with no good flat edge, a few hammers that needed handles, and an axe that had a split one.
I started up the old International three-quarter-ton pickup, raked out all the crud, put away the fencing supplies, gathered all the tools up, got myself a half-gallon tin can of diesel fuel, and started soaking all the jammed tools. I cut off the old hammer handles, the axe handle, freed up the pliers and vise grips, got all the rust and crap dirt out of a useable wire-brush, and used it, and some diesel fuel, to scrub the leadscrew and sides of the old bench vise. Once I had that vise free, I begged an old candle from Grandma, and rubbed wax into the joints. Then I proceeded to disassemble each tool, scrub it clean, wax it, and reassemble.
One was a genuine Vise-Grip, that was missing a spring. The other was a medium sized Crescent like you had.
I could have asked Grandpa to take me to town to get parts, plus some handles to fit, but before doing that, I made certain to show him (and grandma) all the tools I'd gathered up, cleaned up, and had back in operable circumstance, of course, in what tool boxes I found (filled with mice nests and dirt) in the sheds and barns.
Grandpa took me to the town hardware store, and they had the exact same spares kit as what you found for YOUR Crescent- as if that company actually knew what really happened to their tools in the real world. That stuff jams up, and once removed, is either unserviceable, or dropped into a dirt floor, never to be seen again.
Then I drove the old International, with a tool tray in the back, down to the levee valve, where an old Briggs 10hp engine with a centrifugal water pump sat, encrusted in the mud of a recent flood. It was all I could do to heft that thing up into the pickup, but I got it there, drove it back up to the house (about 2 miles through the field, and across the road, in granny gear...) to the machine shed. I laid out newspaper and tore that old B&S down, scrubbed mud out of the cylinder and valves, freed it all up, lightly scrubbed it with some steel wool, cleaned up the magneto, freed the points (and that little pin), disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the starter recoil then scrubbed MOST of the carb. The gasket was shot, but I got it 'close enough'. Cleaned out the pump, and got it started up and running. It needed carb gaskets, air filter, and a new spark plug. Again, Grandpa drove me into town, and we got those parts. The next day, that pump was ready to work again.
Didn't seem like it at the time, but fast forward to my 18th, and I'm driving my Grandpa to the sale barn in his little D50 pickup. He had me pull off the road for a 'farmer's conference' with a neighbor, and he introduced me, and noted to 'em all I did... when I was ELEVEN....
I figured mebbie he'd forgotten I'd done that, but what I really found out, is that he most certainly hadn't... he'd just forgotten that he'd never mentioned how much it meant to him that I did all that...
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AveryD12 wrote:
