# Built To Last



## francist (Dec 26, 2016)

I don't think I've posted anything to the members hangout before, but today I was going through some "junk" as my dad would call it in my back room and I ran across this gizmo that used to belong to him and to his dad before that. Thought maybe some of the old timers might recall a similar one.

As I remembered, my dad said it was a device for repairing flat tires on the Model A farm truck. But that was years ago and I wasn't so sure anymore, so I checked the patent number and yes, that's what it is. Patented in 1933, shortly before my grandparents would have moved to the homestead in northern Alberta. 

And as I thought about that for a second I had to think of the story my dad would tell of when he was about nine or ten years old. Grandad was away building granaries or something, and his young sons had little else to do but find some sort of trouble to get into. 

One day it must have been really boring because all they could think of was banging nails into stuff. And I guess the threshold to the barn was probably as good a place as any, and I surmise it was a nice solid piece of timber that would have taken a nail or two (or twenty) just beautifully. That probably wouldn't have been too much of an issue had the boys driven the nails all the way in (you can see what's coming here, right?), but they didn't. They left them sticking proud by an inch or so, all across the threshold of the barn doors.

My Dad would still grimace and squirm a little in his chair even 80 years later as he recalled grandad coming up the road for supper in the Model A and pulling the truck into the barn, and the paddling of the boys that came shortly thereafter!

I opened this device up today and it's all clean inside, no traces of glue of any kind, but really well made. All lathe-turned with nice, crisp knurling. Built to last. Doesn't really look like it's ever been used, maybe never was, who knows. And it's a year too late to ask Dad to tell the story again.

-frank


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## brino (Dec 26, 2016)

Hi Frank,

I have never seen one and certainly had no clue about it.
But thanks for sharing it, now if I ever see one I can look smart!

-brino


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## eugene13 (Dec 31, 2016)

That's cool, maybe we should start a thread  "Oddaties" you know, like the show on History 
Channel.


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## francist (Dec 31, 2016)

Or "Oldities" perhaps?


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## Terrywerm (Jan 1, 2017)

Great story, Frank. Reminds me of a booby trap that we built in the hay barn to protect our hay fort from the girls. Picture if you will, a hay bale suspended from a rope so that it hangs about three feet off the floor when it swings past the doorway. The bale was then tied back to a side wall and held by a trip string with a sack knot. The idea was that somebody walking into the barn would trip the hidden string, releasing the bale which would swing across and knock down the person walking in. Yup, you guessed it, dad was the recipient of our treachery and he was not happy about it. Years later he admitted that it was a pretty good booby trap, though. He also told us that he knew we had a hay fort in there but never found it, so he was always wondering how we hid it so well. Luckily it was the job of us boys to throw hay down each day, so nobody else ever saw the fort as it was 'dismantled'.


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