Owning and maintaining a class-c motor home of the 1979 vintage definitely has its challenges. One of them is the odd sized nuts and bolts. I had to replace the master cylinder this past weekend. Besides the bolts being very rusted and having to use copious amounts of PB-Blast, it was quite difficult finding the correct size for the nut. 7/16’s was too small 9/16’s too large and 5/8’s was just slightly too large. So I had to dig deeper into the way back of the drawer of the tool box. I found a wrench that was my grandfathers. A 19/32 and 11/16 open ended wrench. From what I’ve read these sizes were popular 30 plus years ago. This isn’t the first time I needed some odd ball size or type of tool and I happened to have and it was one of Gramp’s. No I’m sure there are current modern day tool’s of the same size, but they are not usually included in the sets that are sold. Another too story that I have has to do with my son. He recently started at a technical high school, for his shop he needed to get a handful of tools. We went to the local big box hardware store and bought about $100 of hand tools. Along with this went the usual responsibility talk about taking care of and not loosing them. It’s kind of a right of passage getting your boy his first set of “real” tools. These two events also have me thinking, do people still pass tools down to their sons or daughters? From what I have seen it is one of those things that has been slowly dying out. Maybe its just another victim of the throw away society we now live in, or more and more people just don’t want to get their hands dirty. either way I am very happy that in my family we have this tradition. And one day my son will be happily surprised by a 19/32 open ended wrench.
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