I WAS THINKING last week: both my grandfathers were born towards the end of the 19th century, and died around the middle of the 20th; I was born around the middle of the 20th and am now living in the 21st century. My grandfathers, my dad and me – we’ve connected three centuries. Isn’t that an astounding concept!
My grandpas were born at about the time that Karl Benz in Germany was mounting an internal combustion engine to a frame on wheels, and calling it a car. To illustrate how far we’ve come since then, my grandpas and ol’ Karl Benz would look upon my old Ford Cortina V6 three-litre bakkie as a miracle of engineering (which it is, even if I’m now the only person who thinks so).
Back then, at the end of the 19th century, ahead, there were still decades and decades of horse- and oxen- drawn transport, horses in the streets and manure in the gutters (where there were gutters). There were no aeroplanes and most ships were still powered by wind in their sails. It was a totally different world. Electric light was a novelty, inside toilets were a rarity, running water was a luxury.
My dad’s dad, ol’ Alfred, died before I was born: I was about three years old when my maternal grandad, ol’ Jack, died, and I have only very hazy memories of him. He was a retired pharmacist, and I see him in a workroom full of “stuff”, don’t ask me what, just “stuff”.
I have not got one single thing that belonged to Alfred, but after Jack died his wife, my granny, moved in with us and brought with her many of Jack’s possessions. He was a practical man was ol’ Jack, and so my dad “inherited” Jack’s tools which were added to my dad’s collection of saws, screwdrivers, pliers, chisels etc.
We didn’t have a workshop at home and, now that I think about it, nor did we have a garage. The car was simply parked outside in the driveway. This was back in the 1950s when no one locked their doors, and I’ve no doubt that the car keys were left in the ignition.
So, not having a workshop or designated work-space at home, the household’s tools were kept in a big wooden chest, the heavier and less-used tools at the bottom and the most-used on a large removable tray. The long saws were mounted in the lid, held in place by swivelling wedges of wood. (My sister in Eshowe has still got that wooden chest, scraped down, sanded and varnished it’s a beautiful piece of furniture.)
Anyway, this arrangement meant that the seldom used, or never-used, tools migrated to the bottom of the chest. And being not useful meant that over time they were not worth stealing so that whereas tools have the habit of “walking off”, or are not returned after being borrowed, these old tools survived, and I still have some of them.
But you know what: they are relics of a past age. To people born in the 19th century they might have been useful, but now in the 21st century I can’t even tell you what that use was. They are almost arcane, as if their use requires a secret knowledge.
I have over the years been able to identify the use of two of these tools. One, a wooden-handled tool with a wedge of curved polished agate at its tip, I discovered was used in the application of gold leaf in bookbinding. Grandpa Jack, it seems, at some time did some sort of work that required the application of gold leaf.
Another tool, that looked like an overly intricate tool for removing stubborn wine bottle corks, or that you’d perhaps find on a tray of medieval torture instruments, turned out to be an instrument used by dentists to extract teeth using the power of torque.
I presume that when Jack was still a practising pharmacist back in the 1920s-1930s, he’d have customers coming into his chemist shop and saying, “Stone me, Jack, what have you got for killer toothache?” and ol’ Jack would say, “I dunno, let’s have a butchers”, (a “butchers” meaning a look; butchers hook = look), and he’s look in the bloke’s mouth and say, “Blimey, mate, you need that tooth out. Come in the back and I’ll whip it out for you, no mess, no fuss, and then a drop of the old laudanum should sort the pain out.”
That’s what I reckon, ol’ Jack used to extract the odd tooth in the back of his shop, and trust me, now that I know what it is, the tool or instrument he used is ideal for extracting teeth, and it’s not much bigger than a corkscrew.
What other old tools (or instruments) that I’ve got were used for I cannot imagine. I banged “antique hand tools” into Google and got some wonderful pictures popping up, but not of these tools (or instruments). Their use has been lost in the mists of time. Jack would have known, but Jack’s been as dead as mutton for well over half a century.
Like, for example, the tool in the picture; what was its original purpose? The shaft is iron, the top T-piece, bottom “dingus” and the middle “whatsit” are brass. The middle “whatsit” turns and goes up and down the threaded part of the shaft.
But why? Who knows?
For what purpose? I dunno.
Do you?
