Linda nailed it this week for Stream of Consciousness Saturday:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “nail.” Use it as a noun or a verb. Have fun!
As my regular readers know, I grew up in the country. Barns and old buildings were scattered all around our environment. Once school was out for the summer this became our playground.
We had an old barn out back at my paternal grandparents’ house. they did not raise cattle or hay, but the barn was used for storage and for my grandfather’s tools. It was not unusual for us to explore. I have written before about my interest in tools and how much of it started with my grandfather.
He would often take old jars, nail the lid to a beam and use them to store nails, screws, nuts, and bolts. Everything always in plain sight. Our colorful berry buckets were stored on a long nail pinned into a wallboard allowing for easy access.
I remember distinctly learning how to use the claw on a claw hammer to pull an old nail out of a board. I think it must have been the assembling and disassembling of things that piqued my interest in tools.
My grandfather kept things quite tidy, but that wasn’t necessarily the case for other people in our little valley.
Summer meant running around barefoot, or perhaps with an old pair of Keds sneakers. Keds were great for jumping rocks across the creek or wading through the rocky creeks. In and out of the water they went. It was much faster to cross the creek than follow the road down to a bridge.
Often times, while playing in these old buildings and barns we would encounter old boards lying on the ground. It was not unusual to step on an old nail protruding from a decaying board. Ouch! I can remember more than one nail being pulled out of the bottom of my heel, often through the sole of a sneaker. And the nails were often rusty.
The funny thing, I do not remember going to get tetanus shots. Maybe we got them at normal doctor visits. I’m not sure. My grandmother was a nurse, so I’m sure we had some painful burning solution poured into the wound. Perhaps because of that, I have blocked the memory!
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