the holy wars

i shouldn't ever overly glorify or romanticize contstruction, it was hard work. when i started i was clumsy with my saw, wasting a lot of good lumber, and my hammer and i were hardly friends and it took many poundings and bent nails, pulling them back out and starting over before i made any headway towards being a carpenter. whacking away at the nail, my buddy used to call me a girlie man, come on there girlie man you gonna let that nail get the best of you and he'd lean over from what he was doing and slam that 16 penny home like the pro he was. i was all fingers and fumble, slow and just getting my hammer out of my tool bag and back in was awkward, the handle getting stuck somewhere along the way hanging me up,and keeping the tools in the bag was a chore itself, pencils flew out and were lost, ground into the dirt, the tape measure was always trying to catch a ride in the wrong pouch, the damn framing square was always bouncing out and i'd have to crawl around in the dirt to find it, and then pretty soon i'd have too many tools in the bag and its hanging down my ass and what the hell, i've got a nail puller, dykes, three chisels, a screwdriver, a t- square, a bevel square, a 25 foot tape, a drywall knife and a pencil, and my hammer. damn, i needed an extra body just to carry my bags and then of course all the assorted nails and screws, which were all mixed up with the tools, flying out at the wrong time, oh shit i need a l6 penny not a finish nail and not a drywall screw either, and finally the hell with it and i'd dump the whole bag out in the dirt and start the sorting out process all over. the tools had to be the exact right one of course, they couldn't just be any brand. dig it, the nail puller had to a japanese niwatori, a long thin tool with a dragon's head, sharp, to really bite the wood and get at a nail and a long curved tail for hard to get at nail heads, a stanley tape measure that you could send out twenty feet and wouldnt' fold and so you could get a measurement alone instead of two men having to do it and waste time, a good heavy thick carpenters pencil, a retractable sheet rock knife and extra blades, and a buck brand chisel about 1 and a half inche wide and sharp, which it was only periodically, having hit too many nail heads and spent most of it's time asking me to sharpen it, and a hammer, your choice of weight, with a waffle head and the throat and butt taped with electrican's tape. the tape at the end gave your fingers something to hold onto and at the throat it kept nails from splitting the shaft of the wood. you had to climb ladders with this rig and through windows, kneel on floors and crawl under houses, constantly finding your spilled tools like they were lost children, swearing the whole time. jgk