One evening this past spring, Natalie and I were lounging on the couch and she showed me a picture of a “busy board” on Pinterest. Thankfully, my wife is a Pinterest connoisseur and she knew exactly what my son Jameson and I might like. As such, I needed a way to give my son a small collection of odds and ends to play with so he could tinker and toil as well. Unfortunately, there are a number of things currently working against my son having the same sort of workshop-experience I did: 1) those old garages that I used to play in are all gone and 2) I currently live in an apartment, so I can’t get a good collection of junk going without my wife’s disapproval. Now that I have a son, I want the same sort of hands-on discovery that my grandfathers’ garages gave me. In fact, much of my current knowledge of carpentry, plumbing, mechanics, or general handiwork is built upon the foundation of those many summers in some detached, back-of-the-property garage. I spent many summers there building, exploring, and imagining. They were a treasure-trove of history and experience. Fishing poles, cedar wood planks, lawnmower parts, and metal coffee cans full of odds and ends: these dusty, forgotten relics were my toys and teachers when I was young.įrom as far back as I can remember, I loved tinkering in the tactile world of my grandfathers’ garages. It was in those garages that I could see the remnants of their labor, projects unfinished, or pieces of the past hanging from some old, rusty nail on the wall.

Tools, scraps of metal and wood, sawdust, two-stroke motors, and oil cans tell the story of the men in my family. They were the manhood museums of my late grandfathers they held a half-century’s worth of their work and whatchamacallits. I spent a lot of time growing up in garages.

Stainless steel pulley home depot