&uot;Yankee drill.

Thursday, February 21, 2002

&uot;Yankee drill.&uot; Two simple little words, yes? I’ve had to call Maren Ring three times to refresh my memory. I tried telling myself to think of a Union military unit going through training before the Civil War. Didn’t help much.

A number of you have congratulated me on my good memory and I thank you for the compliment. Actually when it comes to memory I feel like that physician who once said, &uot;I’m not much at delivering babies or setting bones, but I’m hell on fits.&uot;

I’m not much on remembering, but all my life I’ve been blessed with something called &uot;recall.&uot; It’s not at all like remembering. Triggered by some present happening, a phrase of music, the passing of a train, even a whiff of a certain perfume, and I’m not remembering an incident, I’m reliving it.

This time it was the Yankee drill that plucked me out of the present and set me to meddling with my father’s tools as I once did some 75 years ago. Not that I had any leaning toward becoming handy with little repair jobs. You’ve heard before about my lack of manual dexterity.

To begin with I’m a woman more inclined to be passive than active in all that goes under the term &uot;nesting instinct.&uot; Not totally devoid of nesting instinct, such as I have, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, it is less likely to emerge as a bang than as a whimper.

Not too many years ago I decided to splurge and buy a dishwasher. I have wonderful friends who look me straight in the eye and say they LIKE washing dishes. Agatha Christie, one of my favorite whodunit writers, said the best time to plot a novel is while washing dishes. I would not presume to doubt any of these remarkable women, including Agatha.

Myself, I think dishwashers are an inspired invention. My only problem was that in order to install the washer, I had to move the cupboard formerly sitting where the dishwasher now sits.

Hated the looks of it in the spot to which it was moved. I’m not sure how long I’ve had that dishwasher, not more than five years I’d guess. Ever since I’ve had it, though, I’ve whined about that cupboard. Not loudly, you know, just sort of an under-the-breath whimper.

Quite probably Maren got tired of hearing me and suggested that we move said cupboard. It was such a revolutionary approach that I had to ponder it for awhile. While I was pondering Maren was trotting around the kitchen, yardstick in hand, and in no time it was all accomplished in a most satisfactory way. An implement rack had to be moved, and Maren said the next time she came she’d bring a Yankee drill and take care of that. And so she did.

Though they look nothing alike, it was the Yankee drill that started me thinking about my father’s brace and bit. You probably know what a brace and bit look like – a curved piece with a knob at the top to clutch and a sort of a drill at the bottom to bore a hole in a piece of wood, by rotating the curved portion.

I can’t tell you how much I longed to have that contraption in my hands and to make a hole in something. In the front porch, as it turned out. My father had been working on something when a neighbor called for him to come over. It was my great opportunity. I knew I shouldn’t touch the wood my father was working on, but there wasn’t time to hunt for more.

I grabbed the brace and bit and set to work on the wooden front porch. I didn’t know how to hold it and before I had much opportunity to finish off the porch, and just as my father returned, the bit broke right off. My sanity returned about the same time and I realized that things were not going well.

I’ll not deny that I felt a little nervous. My father found another bit (if the drill part is a bit) and regarded me with some interest.

&uot;When I was about the age you are now,&uot; he said, &uot;I did the same thing with my father’s brace and bit as you have just done with mine.&uot;

&uot;What did he say?&uot; I managed to croak.

&uot;He said that when he was my age he had done the same with my grandfather’s brace and bit. I suppose it runs in the family.&uot;

Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column appears Thursdays.