The other day I was helping The Deer Hunter on a job. We were just getting started and he realized he’d forgot to bring a plumb-bob with him for making sure things were straight.
Before I knew what happened he’d taken a boot string out of a pair of snake boots he had in the truck, tied a wrench to one end and made his own plumb-bob.
He said “How do like that?” I said “I like it a lot and I would never have thought of making it.”
The Deer Hunter said he learned the trick from Pap way back in the day when they first started building houses together.
Tipper
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Please pass on to Don C: you quoted one of my favorite hymns. I am constantly surprised by how few know it.
For A.W. Griff : I always thought a plumb line or plumb bob was something you rigged up yourself. Especially when hanging paper I’d snitch a large nut from hubby’s or Dad’s collection and put it on a string. I was just dumbfounded when I first saw one all packaged up in one of those box stores – couldn’t help thinking why a body would waste money on something like that!
I always had things to do around the house growing up, Daddy took the time to show me things that later on in life I could remember how it was done, or little tricks of the trade some call it, when I was a little older say 13yrs I started working some with a Farmer who grew hay and had cows and chickens houses, he even had cucumbers in a 5 acre field one time and we picked cucumbers to sell to a pickling company that year, I actually helped build his first broiler Chicken house one summer and after school, you learn a lot from folks that have been around the road a time or two, and know doubt Pap had and was willing to show a young man how to compromise when you need to get a job done. Simple things go along way, I watched a young man in our crew that didn’t even know how to use a Crescent wrench his Dad never took the time to show him or didn’t know how himself (sad) but he knew how to swing a bat, growing up. This same young man (married with kids) was using a drill one day and the drill was running backward and I just stood there waiting to see how long it took for him to realize that the bit was going the wrong way, he finally broke the bit putting so much pressure on the drill, ( Just plain sad).
Tipper, God gave me two talented men like your hubby they can seemly do anything they set out to do. You came from a dear talented family as well. Seeing some of the jewelry your daughters are making and all the musict ability as well. We are so blessed to have Tipper.
I have an antique “Plumb” axe. I don’t think Plumb didn’t make adjustable wrenches. Maybe Matt’s is a “Crescent” which would make what he contrived a “Crescent-Bob”.
My axe doesn’t have a handle so I think I’ll rig it up with a bootstrap and have a real “Plumb-Bob”.
Just kidding! A man doesn’t have ask of others if he is equipped with multiple talents of his own. Ingenuity trumps engineering every time.
Hi Tippper….great post…..but tell me what are ‘Snake Boots’?
Carol-snake boots are tall boots that protect your ankles and shins from snakes 🙂 But mostly they protect them from briars and heavy brush since snakes don’t go around attacking 🙂
He’s a smart person! I do believe this kind of thinking is getting more uncommon. My husband is hooked on the program “Naked and Afraid” and I’m always yelling. “Boil those bones, you nincompoop!’
Jack of all trades used to be very common in Appalachia. Unfortunately, it seems to be limited to those over 30. It is a gift, but is also learned from need.
Tipper , after my first husband death I wanted to have a heat pump installed the man said I would have to enclose my basement stair so I got all the material to enclose the wall I had the steps enclosed and paneled on and My brother came up and saw the enclosure said he wanted to know who did it, I proudly said I did . Then he said sis how did you know how I said by watching you and hubby so long then he ask if I plumb ball it and I teased and said looks plum good to me . (He grinned and proceeded to help me with the door
The best part of that picture had nothing to do with Matt coming up with the plumb bob.
It was what he was doing with the plumb-wrench – helping another.
Others, Lord yes others,
May this my motto be.
Help me to live for others
That I might live like Thee.
Tipper,
Matt can fix most anything, my daddy was like that. With 6 boys to contend with, as Cindy said, we would have starved to death. Matt use to work with his daddy, Tony. Little did he know, that Matt was paying attention to how he worked. At Pap’s funeral Cindy told me where Tony was and I went and had a talk with him and Nana. We hit it off pretty well and I told him about living in Georgia right after I got married, and that Deer Hunting was popular in Putnam County where I hunted. …Ken
Miss Cindy, Henry Ford is quoted as having said, “Thinking is hard work. That is why so few do it.”
I wish I was inventive like the Deer Hunter. I do a lot of thinking about how to do various things but I don’t usually figure them out. Sometimes I do but not like my Dad did for example.
Tipper–Matt’s approach forms a mighty fine example of “make do with what you’ve got.” Of all Daddy’s traits and characteristics I look back on with loving longing, this was perhaps his finest. He never threw anything away (“I might need it sometime”) and he could cobble together or repair pretty much anything by taking exactly the kind of mindset Matt exemplified with his makeshift plumb bob. Br’er Don, who is a trained professional engineer with two degrees and a bunch of patents to prove it, has often said that Daddy was a far better practical engineer than he could ever hope to be.
It’s heartening to know that, thanks to folks like Matt, the old mountain way of making do is alive and well.
Jim Casada
Neat trick. Who would have thought. You are blessed, as am I, to have a man that can do most anythng.
I’ve done that. I think the last one I made was a large nut off a bolt.
Thanks Ed. Bobwarr looks right to me.
The Deer Hunter is clever like that! He just stops and studies on it a minute and has a solution to the problem of the moment. I’ve met very few people who will take the time to think about something. In fact thinking may be becoming a lost art. If the old people hadn’t had it they wouldn’t have survived.
Pap was also one of those people who could fix anything!