The practical man's workshop
My father was a man of great practicality. And frugality. Extreme frugality. Some might say he was a “cheapskate,” but that is true only insofar as a man who mows hell’s own five acres of crabgrass and creeping vine and brittle blue shale with a ninety-nine-dollar Walmart pushmower may be considered a “cheapskate.” Maybe having a half-horse pushmower was a luxury to men like my father. Maybe he considered riding mowers a little too snooty. As I think about my 52-inch zero-turn with its big Kawasaki engine, all I know is I’ll never know. Sometimes I take stock of my own manly riches and compare myself to my father. My mowers are parked in a sheltered row and plugged into trickle chargers. My tools are organized in a four-foot rolling workbench, ratchets and wrenches in one drawer, wood-working and other implements in another. Motor oils and fluids and consumables sit together on a shelf, and spare parts are in labeled boxes. Compared to how my father kept shop, it is pure ext...