Bob Thomas Writes

Son,

You know me well enough now, I hope, to know that I’m a sentimentalist. I enjoy remembering the past. “The days of my youth”, so to speak.  I guess most ‘Old Farts” like me do… it’s nice to recall when we were ‘bullet-proof” and had no aches & pains.p>I attach a lot of meaning to trivial things sometimes. For example, I comb my hair every morning with an old white nylon comb that your Grand Father used. He took it from his Dad’s dresser when he died – your Great Grandfather. I got it when he died. It’s just a comb, worth about $1.00 today. But it let’s me ‘touch’ my Dad and Grand Dad every day. It gets kind of ‘grungy’ with hairspray now, it used to get ‘grungy’ with “Lucky Tiger” hair tonic when your Granddad used it. He would soak it in hot soapy water for a while and clean it with a brush – just as I do now. I suspect Papaw used ‘lard’ on his hair!

I discovered in my tool bag today a little screw driver that was Papaw’s – my Grand Dad – William Raymond Thomas, one of your three name sakes “William”. One thing you both have in common – he never used “William” either. He was “Ray”, my middle name. It brought back to me in a flash a moment in a day in 1965 or so that I spent with your Great Grand Dad.

Papaw was sitting on his front porch one Sunday afternoon sharpening his pocket knife. – Something he did every Sunday before he started whittling – and he couldn’t get the blade open, so he pulled this little wooden handled screw driver out of his shirt pocket and pried the blade open with it. I commented that it was ‘cool’ or ‘neat’ or some comment, and he handed it to me and said “here, take it”. I protested, but not too hard. I really wanted it. Maybe I just wanted something of his.

I carried it in my tool box to Christmas Island, New Zealand, Panama, Dominican Republicand other places while I was in the Air Force. Since then I’ve had it in my tool bag for 50 years – since about 1965.

When I was little Papaw was a carpenter, truck builder, plumber etc… it seemed to me that he could fix or build anything. On one of those rare occasions when he would let me help him do something, he taught me how to use a hand saw. As I struggled to cut the wood quickly I would invariably cut a crooked line. He would say to me, “Patience Bobby, let the tool do the work and the job will go quicker”. He never took the saw away from me – just let me keep cutting until I got it right.

I don’t know what you can glean from my sentimental ramblings, perhaps that life will be a little easier if you have patience and let your tools work for you. Unfortunately your tools are not so easily seen – your intelligence, knowledge and expertise in your profession are your tools, and I guess that applying them does require a certain amount of patience. And if you are patient enough, your tools – your expertise – will become evident to all who know you.

So, I thought I’d send the little screw driver to you. Maybe when you have occasion to use it, you’ll remember where it came from…. And where you came from . . . I guess it’ll do until you can comb your hair with the “family comb”.

However, after a moments thought, I decided to keep the screwdriver for a while longer. I need the ‘attachment’ to the past some days. And it will give you something to hunt for someday.

Mostly, I just wanted to remind you that I love you, I’m unbearably proud of you and I miss seeing you. 

Dad