the mysterious case of the primitive wrench. “Boss, take a look at this,†the property caretaker told me this morning, showing a 6†adjustable wrench he had found outside.
The caretaker is a thin, wizened, balding little guy 62 years old, with a bug-eye. He performed nobly during the war in Vietnam, but then after becoming a civilian again, was in some sort of motorcycle accident that incapacitated his inner cranium a bit.
He calls me “young man†when he’s sober, and “boss†when he’s drunk. He usually calls me “boss.â€
“I keep telling you—as does everybody else—that there’s strangers lurking around here, maybe some of them dangerous, but you don’t seem to care—“
“I’ve never seen anybody stalking around here,†I interrupted. “Not a one.â€
“That doesn’t mean they’re not around,†the caretaker persisted; “you just never see anything until somebody else points them out.
“It’s like you’re blind, rather than deaf.â€
Okay, okay, we’ve had this discussion before, and I have had it with others, who fail to understand the nature of deafness. This idea that we use “vision†to compensate for lacking of “hearing†is utter nonsense, but this is not the time and place to go into that. Just simply put, without “hearing†sounds to stimulate the “vision,†one just does not notice things unless one is specifically looking for it.
I took the wrench and examined it. “It hasn’t been outdoors very long, it’s still clean. Probably fell out of someone’s tool box reasonably recently.â€
“But whose?†the caretaker asked. “It’s not mine, it’s not [the neighbor’s], and it’s not yours.
“None of us would own a piece of junk like this.â€
I agreed, turning it over in my hand. “Majestic Tools.
“Majestic Tools—a private brand manufactured in Red China during the 1980s for NuWay Hardware Distributors of Baltimore, Maryland, a wholesale hardware concern, main market being Pennsyslvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio.
“My knowledge of the wholesale hardware business is a little bit dated; I dunno if NuWay or Majestic even exists any more.
“But whoever bought this, when they bought it, had no clue as to what good tools are.
“I wouldn’t use this to pick my nose.â€
The caretaker, the neighbor, and I have impressive collections of hand-tools; they keep theirs locked up in chests in the enormous garage here, while I leave my own laying around, including my prize specimens, four 1-3/8†S/K adjustable wrenches about 12†long, and handy for using as clubs.
(I measure adjustable wrenches by their maximum spannage; others apparently measure them by the length of their handles.)
“Where’d you find it?†I asked the caretaker.
“It was laying on the edge of the porch, underneath the railing, over on the far side. There was also a couple of footprints there—“
Now my ears, if I had ears, perked up. The caretaker is descended from a long line, untold generations, of trackers and scouts who survived by noticing such things. I wish I could designate him a Native American from frontier days then, but actually his antecedents are Swiss, he being only the third generation in this country.
They had been Alpine Swiss, and had acquired the genetic propensity to discern and interpret things in the snow, and on the ground, invisible to the rest of us.
Even when in his cups, the caretaker is great for noticing things not noticed by other eyes.
We went outside to look. He pointed to two footprints in the dirt, one of them sort of distinct, and the other one barely discernible. I planted my bare foot (it’s been a California winter here in the Sandhills this year, and so I had not yet put on shoes this day) next to the more-distinct of the two.
“Okay, I’m ten, ten and a half, and this appears to be, roughly, a size larger, say, eleven, eleven and a half.â€
The caretaker speculated they were the hooves of a primitive.
“Oh, I dunno,†I said; “we do know the Las Vegas Leviathan’s a size 16EEEEEE or something like that, his feet as large as commode seats, so this wouldn’t be him. And the prints are too light to have been impressed by Fat Che or Omaha’s Ed Norton; they would’ve left deeper ones, considering their own incredible bulks.
“It’s too bad,†I concluded, “there aren’t more prints, so we could figure out if the stranger has haemorrhoids.â€
The caretaker looked at me as if I were Bozo from Outer Space.
“People afflicted with haemorrhoids have a different sort of ‘walk’ than people not afflicted with haemorrhods,†I told him.
to be updated as soon as events, whatever events they may be, further transpire; and my apologies to the late A. Conan Doyle