Sign Here, Please
With an abundance of time on my hands last spring thanks to COVID-canceled activities, I decided to tackle a shop purge. Away went the “must have” stuff that I rarely, if ever, used; the “that’ll come in handy someday” detritus that never did; and the “I have no idea what this is or where it came from” junk. Way up on a shelf I discovered an unopened box of miscellaneous stuff from Dad’s shop. Judging by its contents, I’d guess he never did a shop purge. In the box I discovered an old, scarred hand plane—a rusty No. 4 Craftsman, with alligatored finish on the tote and knob (neither of which, amazingly, was broken) and yellowed paint streaked along its sole. The name “Virg” scrawled neatly on several parts, including the tote,…