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Tombstones and Toolboxes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n by Fred Voss<\/em><\/p>\n In the corner of our machine shop behind a 10-ton press Image above:<\/em> People Take Turns to Do the Difficult Jobs, by Chad McCail<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tombstones and Toolboxes by Fred Voss In the corner of our machine shop behind a 10-ton press sits Howard\u2019s toolbox a toolbox Howard got from an old…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":432,"featured_media":17505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/432"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20268,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions\/20268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nsits Howard\u2019s toolbox
\na toolbox Howard got from an old sailor 45 years ago
\na beautiful hand-made toolbox made of hand-fitted pieces of wood without one nail
\nin it
\na and a sunflower carved into its center front wooden drawer and painted yellow
\n6 years ago Howard retired at age 75
\nbut still the toolbox sits
\nwhere he left it
\non a steel cart and wrapped in clear plastic sheets
\nlike any day Howard
\nmight return to make that one special $30,000 aircraft part only he could make
\none more time
\nand now we hear from the office that Howard died
\nand still Howard\u2019s wooden toolbox with the sunflower carved into it
\nsits there
\nlike it is too beautiful to roll away
\nstill it sits
\nin its corner like a wooden tombstone grave
\nas if Howard\u2019s tools inside were Howard\u2019s bones
\nand I think
\nhow when I finally retire with sore bones at age 75 or 80
\nI\u2019ll drive my toolbox home
\nand place it in my garage with all its tools inside it
\nto preserve it
\nI have a wild dream
\nsomeday after I\u2019m long gone my words will be world famous
\nand in a world of artificial intelligence and robots people will travel
\nthousand of miles to a museum
\nto open my toolbox drawers
\nand feel my tools
\nin the flesh of their palms and remember
\nme
\na human being
\nwho made poetry out of nuts and bolts and worm screws and vise jaws
\nin the days
\nwhen men still made this world
\nwith their hands.<\/p>\n