In the little white framed house in North Carolina where we grew up the soil wasn’t really soil at all. It was sand rock. It was like someone (God I Guess) had taken sand and poured concrete powder over it and misted a little rain on it. Giving it sort of the texture of a 5th Avenue candy bar, I guess. Well, maybe harder than that. Then again, I do remember a couple 5th Avenue candy bars from Muriel’s fishing lake as a kid that was so hard, I couldn’t break it in half to share with my uncle, so he just had to do without.
To this day people who try to build in that area have issues with getting septic permits because sand rock doesn’t absorb enough water fast enough to pass a perk test. You may have 50 acres but only one spot of a couple hundred feet that you could build on that would pass a perk test. I know that the Bible suggests building upon the rock but the Davidson County health dept. frowns upon it, as many of its would be residents have learned over the years. If the soil doesn’t absorb, then you can’t build.
But for a kid that bank of sand rock behind that little white framed house was a treasure! It provided my very own rock quarry, and I can’t tell you the hours and days that were spent mining out my own sand rock gravel to create roads of my own all over that bank. It was wonderful! BUT IT WAS HARD! You really had to work at getting a chuck of that sand rock out the bank. There was a space that was cut out of about 8 feet by 5 feet in size. There wasn’t a single blade of grass on it. It was scooped out from the shovels of sand rock that I guess dad had dug out on various projects around the little white framed house. No doubt the dog lots and the walks and of course the footings for that little tin shed that was his TV repair shop that housed all his tools including his Brass Hammer and the Big Red Toolbox.
The Brass Hammer was made well over 55 years ago by the AMPCO company in Pennsylvania here in the USA. A Model H-14 Brass hammer. Double sided. And a close examination reveals a lifetime of
pounding metals into various shapes and beating out old wheel bearings and any number of stubborn metal parts that needed some heavy-duty persuasion to make them yield to my father’s wishes. The brass hammer was safer to use in the shop because you can strike metal with it, and it doesn’t throw a spark that could ignite any of the multiple flammable things and vapors that lived in dads’ shop. To say the old hammer saw its days of abuse would be an understatement!
I do remember a time or two “borrowing” his Brass Hammer to break up some of the sand rock pieces I had managed to mine out of the “Brady’s Backyard Sand Rock Quarry.” That Brass Hammer was perfect for the job! One good swing from my seven-year-old hands with that monster hammer turned that unusable lump of a rock into fine sand rock gravel to load into my dump truck for me to haul to my latest construction project that was in desperate need of a load of top-quality aggregate.
There are few memories from my youngest days that still register as fresh as yesterday, but that old Brass Hammer is one that clearly triggers the very sound of my late fathers’ voice as in the old shop he’d holler out, “SON! Go Bring me my Brass Hammer out of the Big Red Toolbox.”
If you only knew how many times, I heard that request during my childhood! It is a phase that will be etched into my memory for the rest of my life I’m certain. “SON! Go Bring me my Brass Hammer out of the Big Red Toolbox.”
Now you need to know that my father was an avid collector of any number of hammers and at the age of seven I was still not very adept at determining the metal makeup of his rather expansive hammer collection. First it was this one and then that one that I’d bring him. He’s under a car needing to bang on something and I’m bringing him hammers that could throw a spark and blow us both up! (You see I only recently learned of the nature of the Brass Hammer and it’s unique “sparkless” throwing capabilities.) But finally, after a half dozen failed attempts at the proper identification of (and often mis location given by the requester) I’d arrive with the proper tool, and all would be well for five minutes until the next tool was needed. The Brass Hammer WASN’T ALWAYS in the Big Red Toolbox. Dad may have thought he put it there, but it could just as well been on his workbench or near the anvil or near the press or just laying on the shop floor or next to his butt crack (as I once chuckled out) though I don’t think at the age of 28 he fully appreciated the humor of his then seven-year-old son.
Out of the hundreds and hundreds of tools and things my dad owned in his 3 shops over his lifetime there are 3 that were standouts for me. The Big Red Toolbox, his anvil and the Brass Hammer.
For me the Brass Hammer is the most meaningful and significant of all. While the handle has darkened considerably over the past 56 years of use it is no less the exact same handle that my seven-year-old hands in 1965 passed off to the hands of a young 28-year-old father with a lifetime of family and work ahead of him. And no doubt I handed it to him multiple times when I was 8 and he was 29 and when I was 9 and he had turned 30 I bet he said “SON! Go Bring me my Brass Hammer out of the Big Red Toolbox.” 20 or more times that year. When I was 10 and he was 31, well you get the story, I’m sure.
When I hold that Brass Hammer in my hands today, I know that this simple tool was a common point of contact and interaction between a father and a son for a countless number of years. I fetched it many, many, many times even as I grew older for my dad and of course he grew older too. This was an object we both held in our hands over the years. And even though both our hands and bodies aged and changed dramatically over these many years the old Brass Hammer hasn’t changed much at all.
As I already mentioned the handle is little darker from age but among a thousand hammers, I could pick it out instantly today. It’s appearance much as it was in 1965 when an exhausted little seven-year-old boy finally heard those magical words “That’s it Tony!” all too quickly followed by those dreadful words “Now SON, look in the top tray of the Big Red Toolbox for the small Phillips head screwdriver.”
My father, George W Brady, passed away on a Monday morning, June 7th, 2021. Just about 2 weeks before Father’s Day last year. I had already bought his extra-large box of Maxwell House Coffee in the K-Cups that he loved. I wish now I’d just taken them to him when I brought him home from the nursing home that Thursday afternoon before he passed on Monday morning.
So Father’s Day is hard. Sand rock is hard. Life is hard. But today I’ll do my best to cherish the memory of my dad and be grateful for the presence of my mom and the rest of my precious family. And I’ll always cherish this very special gift from my mom just a few weeks ago. Like me she couldn’t find a “Brass Hammer”, so she gathered up a pile of more than a dozen hammers in dad’s old shop and said “Do you see it” as I quickly reached into the massive pile and retrieved my father’s Brass Hammer.
It now has a prominent place on my desk and each time as I pick it up and hold it in my hands that are now 63 years of age, I think of those two young pairs of hands that it once passed between a lifetime ago. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for this old Brass Hammer. It’s seen a million dollars’ worth of life in its time.
Charles “Tony” Brady
Father’s Day June 19th, 2022
