In the Bag

I’ve never been a big tool guy. The few tools I’ve had are a mishmash of screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, and the strangest pair of wire cutters my dad use to use to cut the wire on bundles of newspapers, that I’ve collected, inherited, and purchased on impulse. By the time my wife gave me a San Francisco Giants tool bag, I had pretty much all I needed to put up a shelf, bend a nail, fix a flat on a bicycle, changed the oil in a car, or pry open a can of paint.

If manlyhoodness is judged by the size of a man’s tool belt or his relationship with the Snap-on truck driver, then I suppose my might come into question. Perhaps my saving grace was purchasing and cordless drill a few years back.

During our move from our big house to a smaller house, it seemed that whenever I was at one and needed a tool, I had left my tool bag at the other. So I started bringing it with me. On the second to the last trip, I had folded down the back seats of my car so I could have access to the trunk from the interior of the car and vice versa. This afforded me the ability to put longer items in a small car. I put my tool bag on the backs of the folded down seats, sort of half in and half out of the trunk. I did some painting and had used the largest flathead screwdriver to pry and old can open. I remember putting the screwdriver/paint can opener away and then locking up the house and driving to the new one. I don’t remember taking the tool bag out. I haven’t seen it since.

(As a side note; why do they still make flathead screws? I’ve never turned a flathead screw without having the screwdriver fling out of the screw and either gouge a channel in some piece of sheetrock or wood that I wanted to keep gouge free, or take the first 17 layers of skin off my thumb. Phillips seems like the wave of the future 50 years ago.)

So my tool bag is gone. Every screwdriver, except for the one pictured, every open, Crescent, socket, and Allen wrench, my vice grips, and wire cutters gone, all gone. I suppose it could be in the pile of “belongings” in our new garage, but I’ve looked and looked to no avail. Besides, having been in my car for one of the final loads, it would be on top of that pile. My fear is that it was stolen; taken from my car while I did a final walkthrough of the room were I touched up the paint.

I don’t blame the economy, people steal when the opportunity presents itself; say in the form of an open car with the final flotsam and jetsam of a family with really too much stuff. I’m not surprised whoever it was passed over the broken pole saw and the shards of terracotta pots and instead reached for the tool bag. Thoughtfully provided with a handle.

Now I must take stock of what tools I need to maintain a home and acquire new ones. I supposed I could scour yard sales, estate sales, and garage sales and put together a new (to me) set over time. Maybe I could go out to the Cherry Auction, if that’s still going on, and purchase a complete set at one time and low price. There’s always borrowing.

(Another side note: there should be a law that you can’t call it an estate sale if your inventory consists of just an old stationary bicycle, some VHS tapes, and a 14-year-old fax machine in your driveway.)

To the person who took my tool bag I just want to say, “I hope you needed it, or the money you got for selling it, more than I do. I hope you are a modern day Jean Valjean, in non-fictitious Les Miserables who only took it as a last resort to feed starving family members. I probably should have left some bread out instead.