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Claw Hammer : A Fether’s Day Story
When I am seven years old my dad gives me a claw hammer.
It is summertime, just after a wet spring. So wet in fact, that the roof of our garage is leaking in several places.
My dad decides to fix it himself.
It is a Saturday morning. I am on the couch watching The Superfriends.
“We are going to Builder’s Emporium” my dad declares.
He is in the kitchen, going through his normal routine before he leaves the house.
He finishes his coffee, opens the vitamin cupboard for his supplements, grabs a handful of raw pecans and a banana, and heads out the screen door.
My brother and I follow behind him.
We climb into my dad’s white, 4-door, International pickup truck.
As we drive, my dad tells us the plan.
“We need to fix the garage roof.”
My brother and I stay silent, listening to hear what this means.
“Before I met your mom, I worked on roofing jobs in Seattle. We can fix the entire garage roof ourselves.”
We drive down to the corner of Inglewood and Manhattan Beach Blvd, and park in the Builder’s Emporium parking lot.
My dad fills a cart with all the things we needed for the job: rolls of roofing tile, tar, tar paper, and a huge box of roofing nails.
As he pushes the cart towards the checkout, he says “wait, one more thing.”
On a detour down the tool aisle, we stopped in the hammer section.
He looks around a bit, and then chooses two identical hammers from the racks.
They both have iron claws painted black, with solid wood handles.
He gives one to my twin brother Jeff, and one to me.
.
“There is nothing more useful than a good claw hammer.” he says.
My brother and I each carried our new claw hammers to the checkout.
—
“I’ll pay you each 50 cents an hour, but you have to do everything I say.” My dad tells us.
My brother and I are standing in the back-back yard.
Behind the garage, next to a pile of roofing supplies..
“First thing, get your hammers”
Jeff and I both go for the same hammer at the same time.
I reach for my hammer. My brother is sure it is his.
We are 7 year old twin brothers who share everything.
But not these new hammers.
“That’s mine!”
“No, it’s mine!”
I grab the handle, and Jeff grabs the claw, each pulls in the opposite direction.
“Stop!”
“No!” ]
My dad quietly watches this for a bit, then he speaks.
“Do you want me to get you two gals a couple purses so you can fight this one out?”
It was the 70’s when this kind of talk was the norm.
It stung.
It worked.
I let go of the hammer.
My brother takes it.
I picked up the identical one next to it.
The hammer feels good in my hand.
Solid.
The wood is smooth.
The slight curves on the handle are inviting to hold.
We both stand at attention and listen to what my dad says next..
“First, we need to remove the existing tiles from the garage”
.” You do it like this…”
My dad climbs onto the roof of the garage to demonstrate.
It is a very short climb, as the back-back was about 8 feet higher in elevation, than the ground the garage stood upon.
This means you can easily access the roof.
Even 7 year old kids can do it.
My dad stands up on the roof, and walks over to a row of tiles, sits down, and starts pulling-up on the corner of one of the rectangular pieces.
The tile gives way just enough to pull out the end of the existing nails.
He then slips the claw of his hammer underneath them, and yanks them free.
He grabs the tile with a gloved hand, frees it, and tosses it in the brush of the back-back.
He puts the old nails in an empty Foldger’s coffee can.
Foldger’s is my mom’s favorite.
“One down, a thousand to go!” he says. “Now, get up here and get started”.
Besides a hammer, my dad supplies us both with a pair of gloves, and a pair of goggles, just in case something gets near our eyes.
Under the mid-morning sun sweat comes easily.
The goggles fog-up..
I have to remove them several times before I finish the first tile.
At first the work is difficult, but after a few tries, I get the hang of it.
I jam the claw of the hammer underneath a tile.
I twist it down, pushing the handle towards the garage roof.
The tile spring ups, exposing the nails that had once held it in place.
I remove the nails with my gloved hand, and put them in the coffee can.
Throw the tile into the pile in the back-back yard.
Repeat.
What would have been impossible for a 7 year old kid without the tool, becomes a simple, repeatable task with a claw hammer.
After an hour, my dad announces “You each just earned 50 cents!”
In 1977 for a 7 year-old, 50 cents an hour is high motivation.
Even with the Manhattan Beach summer sun beading down on us, we keep going for another three hours.
Then we stop for lunch.
—
We spend the rest of Saturday up on the roof with my dad
We pull up tiles with the claw side of the hammer.
Remove the nails
Putting them into the Foldger’s can.
And throw the tiles into the back yard.
As we work, my dad starts talking.
“Your Granny and gramps sent my brother John and I to a boarding school named Manumit when we were kids. “
My dad takes a long pause before continuing.
He pulls out the tile he was working on, and tosses it off the roof.
It hits the ground a bit harder than the ones he has previously thrown.
“It was the Great Depression and they didn’t have any money to keep us around. Manumit school was on a farm in New York state. It was like an orphanage for kids whose parents had to work in the city. As long as we worked on the farm, we could go to the school for free.”
“What did you do there?”
“Well, we farmed, we camped, we fished, we even got to ride horses sometimes. There was a movie theater and a store in town where we could buy 6 pieces of candy for a penny.“
“It sounds like fun”
“I hated every minute of it”
”They sent me there when I was six years old.”
“One day My mom, dad, John, I, and Poochie my dog were a happy family”
“The next day my mom drives us out to the end of a road and drop us off.”
“She never even told us what was happening.
“She just drove away and the people at the school took us in. “
“How long were you there?” .
“Eight years. Until I went to high school.”
“I never saw Poochie again. My parents moved to a one bedroom apartment in Bronxville New York”
“They said there was no room so there was no room for us.” “We were allowed to come home just a couple days a year. “
I can not imagine this.
I’ve lived in the same house with my twin brother, two sisters. mom, dad, and two cats for 7 years.
It had always been that way, and I was pretty sure it would always be that way.
“The first winter was the worst. I realized we would not be going home for Christmas. I begged my mom to send me my ice skates, so at the very least, I could skate on the pond at the school. She never sent them.
“In the summer we didn’t go home either. Instead we were sent to live with family friends in Pennsylvania. My brother hated me for it.”
“Your brother hated you?”
I looked over at my brother.
We argue sometimes, but we would never hate each other.
“Oh yeah. He was older than me.. He said ‘everything was fine until you came along.’ He beat the crap out of me any chance he got, just like my dad did to him. “
My dad stops pulling up nails and looked up at Jeff and I.
We both stopped using our hammers so we could hear what he had to say.
“I told myself at the time if I ever had kids of my own, I would never send them away and I would never make them go to boarding school. “
Then the conversation is over.
We work the rest of the afternoon.
I think a lot about what my dad told us.
It unlocks some of the mysteries about my grandfather.
Now I know why gramps was so quiet and never shared any stories about my dad’s childhood with me.
He didn’t know any.
At about 5:30 that evening, the roof is clear of tiles.
“Good work men. That was 10 hours today, so you each earned $5.00 each”
“Let’s get out early tomorrow to finish the job”
—
After a dinner of Dennison’s chili in front of the TV. My brother and I go into our room and play our Stat-O-Matic baseball game.
“Five dollars each!” I say, as I pull the first batter from my stack of player discs.
I lay down Babe Ruth on the spinner, and flicked the arrow.
“Yeah!” my brother says, “what should we do with it?”
“Maybe we can go to Toys R’ Us? tomorrow?” .
The spinner stops on “Strikeout”.
Babe Ruth hit a lot of home runs in his days, but struck out even more.
“We’ll see if mom will take us tomorrow afternoon.”
As always, I go to sleep in my own bed that night.
It was not much of a bed, just a half piece of a foam mattress recycled from an old sofa bed, laid on-top of a piece of plywood.
Beds my dad improvised for his “surprise” twin sons as they never planned to buy two of everything..
Sleeping on the bed felt comfortable, and nice.
I was in my own house, with Jeff, my sisters, the cats, and my parents.
It was not the Great Depression and I was not at some boarding school in New York, away from everything I knew and loved.
—
We wake up Sunday morning, and both jumped out of bed ready for the work day.
My mom was at her seat at the kitchen table, sipping Folger’s coffee and playing solitaire.
My dad is at the counter, grinding corn to make his own corn cakes.
Next to the grinder was a bowl of my dad’s most infamous health concoction: grape juice, egg whites and pecans.
We kids affectionately call it “Pink Party Puke.”
“We will start working in an hour boys”
Tom Hatten’s Popeye show is on Channel 9.
Just after an episode of Super Chicken, my dad announces that it is time to get back out and finish the job.
—
We watch my dad roll out tar paper to approximately the length of the roof, then then cut it lengthwise. He does this several times until he has enough to cover the whole thing.
My brother and I climb up onto the bare roof from the back-back again, this time helping my dad lay down the tar paper in long strips, and then nail it into place.
After starting each nail with a few taps, my dad shows us how to swing the hammer down with the whole of our forearms.Instead of just bending the swing at the wrist.
By using the whole forearm to swing, we could knock most nails in with a single hit.
As we work, it is hard to think of anything but what we might buy at Toys R Us that afternoon.
Would there be any toys from that new movie “Star Wars” everyone was talking about? Or more dominoes to build an even longer trail to knock down? .
As we work, I ask my dad a question.
“What was it like to live at a boarding school dad?”
“We played lots of games like hide and go seek and kick the can. I loved those games, but my brother hated them. “
“Hated them?”
“I don’t know why John hated them. I always felt that if he liked those games more, and played them with us, he would not have gotten killed in World War II”
We were nailing the ends of the tar paper down, making sure to pull it straight so that it left no creases where rain water could slip inside.
“In Belgium In 1945. He was killed by a sniper. He won a Silver Star for bravery. ”
I stop to think about this.
I once had an uncle named John.
He was my dad’s brother.
He died 25 years before I ever had a chance to meet him.
We finish laying down the tar paper in a couple hours.
We get ready to lay the actual tile..
Like the tar paper, My dad rolls out the long strips of tile on the driveway, and measures them. He cuts them with a large pair of shears, rolls them back up, and has my brother and I carry them up the stairs to the back-back.
We spread tar down, then my dad lays the tile long ways across the garage roof.
Then we all help nail them down.
We make sure to overlap them so any water rolling down the roof would not fall through the cracks.
“Did you fight in World War II dad?” I ask..
“No, no. I was in the army, but I did not fight. I was only 17, so I lied about my age to join-up. “I was in the 10th Mountain Division. We were sent to Italy. Our troops were getting mowed down in the mountains, and our turn was coming.
“The night before they were going to send our entire unit to the front, I snuck out with some guys and we got caught. They sent us back behind the lines, and I never saw any action.”
“Oh.” I reply. It was the only thing I could get out.
My dad shows us how to line up the nails and space them out to get just enough coverage, while also making them look uniform.
The tiles and tar were thicker than the tar paper so at first takes two or three tries with the claw hammer.
After I get the hang of it, it becomes a two step process:
Start the nail with tap while holding it,
Let go and slam the nail in with a good wallop using the forearm approach.
The feeling of the nails going through the tile, tar, paper and into the wood is intensely satisfying.
—
As I hammer, my 7 year-old brain ponders a thought that has never left me since..
My dad was one day away from dying in World War II.
By some random chance, he was saved
That’s the only reason I exist right now,
Up on this roof, hammering nails with him and Jeff.
Any slight change in what had occurred,
an order that came a day late,
a stray bullet, a torpedo from a submarine,
and my dad would have ended up dead like his brother.
Then, none of this, not the hammer, not
the roofing tiles, not my family,
nor I
would be here right now.
The whole of the universe feels like it is suffocating me
The world feels fragile,
yet vast and lonely.
I want to scream.
But before I can get out a sound,
I feet the claw-hammer in my hand.
I look at the roof we have spent the weekend fixing.
I see my dad and my brother with me.
The image helps me calm down.
I hammer in the nail I am holding in my hand,
and then I reach for another.
—
We finished-up the roof by 4:00 PM
No words are spoken, but I can tell my dad is happy with our work.
We put in 6 more hours which means we each made $8.00.
We put our tools in the garage, and follow my dad to his room,
He pays Jeff and I immediately in Bicentennial quarters.
“You worked hard for that money,” he says
“ don’t let it burn a hole in your pocket.”
“I have a migraine”.
That is our cue to leave his room.
He lays down on his bed and closes his eyes.
“Turn off the light and shut the door when you leave,”
And so we do.
—
In my mom’s Datsun 710 station wagon, on our way to Toys R. Us in Torrance, I feel the stack of quarters in my pocket.
I’ve never had that much money in my entire life.
They feel good. Hefty. Significant.
I slip my hand between the quarters
The cool metal discs fall between the spaces in my fingers.
I’ve never been to Toys R Us with my own money to spend.
When we arrive, I am overwhelmed by all the things on the shelves.
The aisles are crammed to the ceiling with amazing looking boxes and packages.
All of them make promises of joy and fun inside.
As I walk down each aisle, I keep my hand in my pocket, making sure the quarters are still there.
Making sure it is all still real.
Thoughts swirl through my head:
Did I really work all weekend and earn all this money?
Did we really just re-tile the entire garage roof?
We zig-zag down the aisles, up one, and down the other, looking at everything.
The shelves are stacked with things I’d only seen in a Sears wish book: art kits, wood-working sets, erector sets, chemistry sets, rows and rows and rows of die-cast cars, play sets, GI Joe and fashion dolls, plastic soldiers, stacks of board games, even games too hook up to the TV!
Too many wonderful things to fathom.
We turn down the sporting goods aisle looking at the bikes, and fiberglass skateboards.
Most everything was more expensive than the $8.00 I have in my pocket, but the possibility of it all is still thrilling.
Then, next to the roller skates I see a pair of white ice skates, on clearance because they are far out of season.
The ice skates reminded me of the pond at my dad’s boarding school.
My dad probably never had $8.00 in his pocket when he was a kid.
He never worked all weekend with his dad and brother.
He never took a trip to a store like Toys R Us with his mom.
He lived at co-op boarding school from when he was six years old.
Uncle John really did die from a German sniper in World War II.
I find myself getting less and less enthusiastic about spending my money.
Even with all the wonderful things on display.
Nothing in the store looks good enough for me to need right away..
But I can’t leave empty handed.
In the back of Toys R Us, we find the bargain aisle.
Lots of old toys, with their orange Toys R Us price tags slashed with a red marker, and new prices scribbled on.
Jeff and I look up and down that aisle until we found a couple of pretty cool toys for cheap:
a cardboard Planet Of The Apes playset,
and a 8” Wild Bill Hickock cowboy action action figure.
Together they cost $1.50 plus tax.
They are both things I think my dad will like.
We buy one of each, and leave the store.
We open our toys on the living room floor, and play with them for the rest of Sunday until it is time to take a bath, and watch Mutual Of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
When my dad emerges from his room sans migraine, just before bedtime we show him the action figure and playset.
“Very good purchases boys and the best part is, you have most of your money left-over for another day”
—
Within a couple years those cardboard playsets and 8” actions figures are just a memory.
The Planet Of The Apes fortress gets mixed in with die cast cars, Tinker Toys, Erector Set pieces, and beams from a Girder and Panel set.
The apes get lost or broken, and the cardboard snaps that held the walls together stopped connecting. Wild Bill Hickok (who is joined shortly after by “Cochise” and “Davy Crockett”), lost his weapons, and then lost his place in my heart, which soon had room only for Star Wars, LEGO an Atari…
The tile roof on the garage is gone now, as is the garage, our tiny house, and the back-back yard. Torn down to make space for new Mega McMansion.
My dad and his migraines and “pink party puke” are gone too.
and so is my mom with her solitare and her cup of Folgers
But the claw-hammer,
That’s still with me.
It hangs in my garage as I write this, waiting to be used on my next project.
The claw-hammer my dad gave me when I was 7 years old.
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