Billie Walsh posted on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:23:55 -0500 as excerpted:
> On 07/19/2011 03:55 AM, Anne Wilson wrote:
>> On Monday 18 Jul 2011 07:42:09 Duncan wrote:
>>> But I can't shake the feeling that something like a year from now,
>>> I'll chance across a photo or something, and it'll be "Oh, so THAT was
>>> what Anne was talking about! DUH! I should have thought of that!"
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, that's enough of a description that I'm at least somewhat
>>> likely to recognize one if I see it, perhaps at a yard sale, or come
>>> across a photo of it myself, so that year-from-now or whatever
>>> scenario isn't unlikely.
>>
>> Here you are: http://imagebin.org/163773
>>
>> As you might guess, it's very old - a family "heirloom" :-D
> That looks like a VERY old version of "Water Pump Pliers", or as you
> might know them better "Channel Lock".
Indeed it does. I hadn't made the "water pump pliers" connection (yet?),
but I was indeed thinking "that looks like a cross between pliers and a
wrench", which indeed, "channel locks" obviously are.
And indeed, I was right about the "Oh, so THAT was what Anne was talking
about! DUH!!" feeling.
And contrary to Gene, I /believe/ I've seen something very similar,
before, tho at this point I've been thinking about this so hard for so
long I can't quite be /sure/. However, if I'm not mistaken, the version
I had seen previously had the the same or extremely similar jaws but a
fixed rivet, not the adjustable pin as here.
(Actually, again if I'm not mistaken, I seem to remember it in Grandpa's
shop, indeed, but the fixed rivet was long gone, to be replaced by a
cotter pin. I remember thinking as a teen that the cotter pin wasn't
exactly the appropriate replacement. Either that or it had something
unidentifiably rusty there, that I might have broken myself and tried
replacing with a cotter pin or nail or the like. But that it had a
single pivot point instead of the multiples on one arm that this one has,
is I believe the strongest part of the memory, along with my frustration
at not having quite the right thing to replace the pin with, either when
I broke what was there, or from Grandpa having evidently replaced it with
not quite the right thing, before I saw it. Anyway, I remember groking
the functionality but being frustrated by that stupid pin thing! I don't
recall whether I ever found a bolt and nut of the appropriate size to do
the job properly or not. FWIW, that would have been... about thirty
years ago, and the tool was every bit as rusty looking as the one in the
picture, back then. I believe I remember thinking that it must of been
from the Depression era if not earlier, as it certainly looked older than
the WWII stuff I used to pore over the encyclopedia looking at. (WWII
brought quite some advances in technology, tools, etc. I was fascinated
with tanks and planes growing up, and WWII really brought a leap in their
technology and in the tools and mass production technology used to
produce and maintain them. That was really the beginning of modern
machinery as we know it today, altho earlier, cruder versions certainly
existed in the depression era and before. But that's why I placed it as
depression era or earlier, because I knew that while better tools might
have existed before the war, they weren't really mass produced or in such
common use, while afterward, they most certainly were, so in my mind that
tool had to have come from before WWII.))
But of course, all these supposed memories might well be pre-primed
false-memory-syndrome, too. But if it did happen, I'd certainly not
thought about it in decades, and it could well be that the photo is
bringing back the memories, with more details coming back as I wrote the
memory down.
Either way, thanks. Regardless of whether /that/ particular memory is
valid, I can almost taste the old rust and smell the old oil in the air,
remembering back. All my grandparents on both sides are long since dead,
but that's a memory of a much simpler time in my life, and I still
treasure that year with my grandmother, as my first step away from home.
Thanks for bringing back the memories.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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