The Toolbox Rule

The Toolbox Rule

My father’s hair-triggered and barely legible retractable tape measure lies in a drawer of where I squirrel precious things.

Daddy’s battered, green steel toolbox was always on the floorboard of his oxidized blue ’53 Chevy pickup. It was my toy box the summer days I rode along, hoping someday he’d choose me as his hired man. After all, my own long handled camp shovel and red rubber rain boots were already in the bed of the pickup beside his shovel and irrigation boots.

I was the curious child.  The child never admonished for opening the lid of his toolbox, for examining the settings of slip joint pliers. Never scolded for testing the retracting mechanism of his tape measure, or for trying the rattly-loose span of an adjustable crescent wrench most people would have discarded, but “If it still works,” he’d say, “you keep it.”

The yellow resin handled screwdriver with a chunk of grip missing, an assortment of flat and locking washers, various found nuts, screws, bolts and the tape measure were to stay in the shallow top tray. “Put the tray on the floor, not on the seat,” he’d instruct, “so it doesn’t spill.” And you never, ever took the toolbox out of the pickup. “That,” he told me, “is how people lose toolboxes.” Daddy fixed things by working out of the open passenger side door, leaning in to get what he needed from his box.

If I took the ball peen hammer out to get at the claw hammer, I was to put the ball peen back before I went off to practice pounding and pulling nails. That was the rule.

When my mother built me my own little toolbox from baby shoe box with a rope carry handle threaded through the top, Daddy gave me a short-bladed flathead screwdriver, a kid-sized hammer actually made for clock repair, and a plastic six-inch ruler. I could borrow his pocket-sized tape measure, “but put it back when you’re done. Then when you need it, you know where it is.” At six, I broke the toolbox rule with my own tools and lost my hammer. I never broke the Toolbox Rule again.

I’ve had a half dozen toolboxes in my lifetime, each set up and governed by lessons learned from my father. His yellow resin handled screwdriver rests alongside newer screwdrivers in my top tray with saved nuts, bolts, screws, and washers.

And his beaten-up tape measure, which I was only allowed to borrow, and not carry in my own little toolbox is mine now, but only to borrow. I choose not to believe “You can’t take it with you,” when it comes to tools. When I leave this life, I’m taking that tape measure with me to return to my father. Because that’s the Toolbox rule.