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Baling Wire
© By Abe Lincoln
Roy Sommers was one of the first persons I met when we moved to town in
1962.
It was a miracle that vehicles that could not stop at Wolf Creek Pike
had not
demolished his store. The old building leaned and the old roof sagged
but for
its age the place seemed strong enough. The building was badly damaged,
at
least once, when a car, rammed into the store and came to a stop about
halfway
through the building.
Roy had things like wire in his store and I always needed some wire.
People who
came through or were born (like I was) during the Depression always
needed some
wire. You can do things with wire you can’t do with string or tape.
When the
muffler or tail pipe of a car fell down it would be wired back up in
place and
it would last a long time. A lot of people used wire to fasten gates
and
wire-up things to keep them from falling apart.
A man with a giant metal hook where his hand used to be, who lived in
Clayton,
Ohio, showed me how the hook was attached to his arm. It was fixed to a
block
of wood that was covered with some leather and that was wrapped with a
piece of
ordinary baling wire. His arm stub fit in the leather part but I don’t
know
what kept it from falling off. His name was, “Hook Fair,” and I have a
notion
that there is at least one fart, older than me, who might remember
him.
Hook lived in the house right across the street from the grocery store
by the
corner. If you were coming in on 49 from Phillipsburg, the road stops
at the
intersection with the church on the corner. The store is still there on
the
left, and is now a house. Hook’s house is still there across the street
like it
always was. I never really liked Hook Fair because of his hook. It
scared me.
It was a big curved hook, like you could find in the haymow of any
barn. Maybe
that’s where he got it.
It always looked extra sharp to me and it would come too close to my
leg when I
sat down on his porch swing with him and my dad sat on the porch rail
so he
could spit his Mail Pouch tobacco juice on Hook’s flowers. I actually
shook his
hook the first time we met. Dad told me to “shake hands” and Hook stuck
his
hook out and with some fear, I shook it up and down.
Roy Sommers told me a lot about my house or about where it was built. I
mentioned
to him, one day, that there were a lot of crawdad burrows or holes in
my back
yard. He told me that where my house was built used to be a kind of
swamp and
he used to ice skate there when he was a boy. He said there used to be
a lot of
snakes there too. That reminded me that our neighbor was mowing his
yard once
and gave out a yelp because he had run over a snake and the mower had
cut the
snake’s tail off.
He probably won’t remember that but he sure looked funny jumping away
from his
mower. The snake wasn’t killed because I saw it several times after
that; with
a short, stubby, tail end.
I have no idea where I can buy wire today. I still have some from the
last I
bought from Somers-Behnken Hardware but it is down to some short kinked
pieces
and some of those are showing signs of rust. It would be nice to buy a
new
piece. I suppose you can get wire in rolls from Lowes or Home Depot.
But wire
seldom wears out and I still have some that I got from Roy Sommers.
© Abraham Lincoln
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