The following “letter” is part of the continuing series from the unpublished novel by James Garrett, “Benicia Letters Once More”. He does not plan to publish the book but instead is choosing to share the letters with the readers of the Benicia Herald. The letters continue the storyline of Garrett’s first novel “Benicia and Letters of Love”. Each “letter” tells of love in one of its many forms from a separate point of view. Benicia is represented prominently in the letters because of Garrett’s deep fondness for the city of Benicia. He hopes readers see themselves or others they know in the letters because the concept of “Love” is universal.

Dear Mr. Garrett,
Reading your book, “Benicia and Letters of Love”, brought back many memories. One of the strongest was of my father’s carpenter’s tool chest. I keep it in the shed in the backyard and it sits on the floor like an altar. It has its own reserved space which allows me to easily open it whenever I want. I never put anything on it.
Dad died about 50 years ago. He had gotten old and worn by the movement of time and it became his moment for God to call him to his side to build homes for new arrivals. In this life Dad built and repaired many homes.
In all that time he never had a tool powered by anything except his personal strength. I often marvel when looking at some of my power tools and those I see in stores and think how much Dad would have enjoyed them and how much he could have done with them. He was good with his hands. What he accomplished with his tools seemed to flow from him through the tools and into his project. When he was cutting a piece of wood, he was a part of that piece of wood. At times he would talk to the wood. He was sharing with it and he thanked it for what it was and what it would become.
Dad was a pretty even-tempered man. However, he got angry with me once when showing me how to use a plane. It wasn’t one of my brightest times on the planet. He was showing me how to plane down the edge of a door. I guess I was more interested in knowing how the plane worked than paying attention to the part about using the tool in smooth strokes in the direction of the grain.
I checked that the blade in the plane was set correctly and gave my first young, feeble, and short stroke with it. The only problem was I had started against the grain. Dad calmly told me what I had done wrong and how to correct the problem.
For some reason I felt I needed to re-clamp the door and did so as Dad watched. I remember he had a look of “What are you doing?” on his face, but he didn’t say a word. Maybe he just felt I believed I needed to readjust my position. Then I picked up the plane which I had laid on its side on the floor and started again to plane the door. That’s when Dad got angry. I had made the same dumb-butt mistake I made before by running the plane against the grain.
He got over his upset in a couple minutes. Here he was helping his son learn of the tools from which he made a living to feed his family and his son hadn’t listened to all he was being taught. I understand so much of all of that now. It dawned on me a little at a time over the years. My dad loved me and was teaching me of that love in one of the few ways he knew.
Dad’s tool chest became mine after he died. The day after he died, as part of contrition, atonement, pride, and sorrow, I guess, I oiled each of the tools as Dad taught me to do and sharpened each tool which had a point or edge. They didn’t need oiling. The sharpening part isn’t literally true for each point was already sharp and each edge held true from the last time Dad sharpened them. It was basically symbolic on my part. I knew Dad’s hands would never touch his tools again. As I used the whetstone, I remembered many of the times he and I had opened that tool chest together. I remembered the first time he handed me the key and told me to open it by myself. I didn’t understand then what handing me the key meant in so many ways.
As I sat in the basement that day I removed each tool from the chest and laid it on the floor near me. My hands moved over each of them before I set them down. In each case the movement was a caress of love for the man whose tools they had been and love for the knowledge of the tools that man had given me.
I turned the adjustment knob on the plane I used so many years before on the door. I felt the smoothness of the wooden handles worn to a glisten by Dad’s hands. I lifted his favorite hammer, and in my imagination hammered home a nail as he often did with one stroke regardless the size of the nail. I placed the three hand saws, crosscut, rip, and finishing, on my lap one at a time, as if they were children. Dad told me that with those three saws a good man could do all the cutting needed to build a house in his day. He had done it.
The small box insert divided into two sections held what were once mysterious items to me. Long ago Dad taught me the use of inside and outside calipers, a snap line, and of all the other “small stuff” tools in those box sections. One item I still keep in my small metal tool box which I carry with me for projects around the home and to help friends is the last carpenter’s pencil he used. It is only about three inches long, as he left it, and will never get any shorter. At times I’ve looked at that pencil and asked my dad for the answer to a problem which perplexes me. After a few beats of my heart, the answer usually arrives. It doesn’t happen all the time. I’m not my dad.
I still don’t totally understand the full uses of carpenter’s and framing squares. Dad was a master mathematician with each. He could compute the number of steps and the rise and run of a staircase, it seemed, with just a glance. Once I asked him how tall a staircase was. He looked at it for a couple moments and told me. He was proven correct. He had counted the number of steps and multiplied that in his head by the height of the rise. He didn’t need a calculator. He had one in his head.
I often use Dad’s tools. Using them keeps me closer to my dad and my roots. Whenever I start to make a cut with a hand saw I always pull towards me slowly to begin the cut. If you push forward on your initial stroke you could ruin the cut.
Some of my favorite tools are the ones he made or adapted for a specific job. In one case he made an extra long handle for a chisel. In another he painted the handle of a screwdriver red. I wish I would have asked him why he did that to the specific tools to which he applied his secrets, but I was just a kid. It is how it was meant to be.
I loved that man. When his time came he was slightly stooped. He cussed at times when his back kept him from doing all he once had done, and at what he felt was the failure of his hands to perform with the skill and touch they once held.
What his hands always held was love, love for his wife and family. The moment Dad died Mom was holding his hands in hers. She kissed those hands.
Brian

James Garrett is a lifelong resident of Benicia and a former teacher at Benicia High School. He is the author of the following novels: “Benicia and Letters of Love”, “The Mansion Stories”, “Chief Salt”, and “One Great Season, 9-0!” He also compiled a three-volume work titled “The Golden Era: Benicia High School Football, The 1948 through 1960 Seasons, “A” History with Comments.”
He can be contacted at jgstoriesnpoetry@aol.com.

Sharing is caring!