On my way to the hardware store to buy a pipe wrench, I looked up and found myself at the corner of Bow and Arrow (streets, that is, and I am not making this up). I had driven past Archer, which is where I really needed to turn to get to Grayco, but I drove past and turned at my next opportunity, which was Bow Circle, and that just happens to be the street the hardware sore is located on, even though it is quicker to turn at Archer, then you don't have to double back to actually enter the parking lot. But back to pipe wrenches. The Stilton or pipe wrench was invented--not by the Pied Piper, he was another sort of nut job--but by Daniel Stilton, and patented in 1869. In those days there were no standard nut sizes, so every nut job needed his own wrench, or so it seemed.
But the adjustable pipe wrench was invented for use with round objects, such as pipe. Softer lead pipe could be grasped by the steel teeth of the pipe wrench and turned. It might be thought that one pipe wrench might handle an infinite number of nut jobs, This wrench must be distinguished, however, from a spanner, which can be adjusted to fit a nearly infinite number of nut sizes. Unlike the pipe wrench, which had to have teeth to grasp the rounded lead pipe, the spanner had flat parallel edges that were adjusted to fit the flat corners of a square or four-sided nut, or otherwise flat-sided nuts of say eight sides, for example.
Neither of these wrenches should be confused with a lead pipe cinch, which is a sure thing, sometimes used to refer to sure profits, such as those made by monopolistic wealthy people. By extension, a lead pipe cinch would be a certainty, unlike my turn one street late onto Bow from Arrow, instead of Archer--winding up at the intersection of Bow and Arrow.
There I sat, musing about the old-time tool I was running out to buy, really for the first time in my life. When I owned my first house, I borrowed a pipe wrench from my father-in-law. The second house we bought, was near my own father's house, so I would borrow his when I needed one. Shortly after that, my father-in-law sold his last house and gave me a box of his old tools, including his pipe wrench. I'd kept it until my son bought his first house, and I had what I thought was my last house on the market. I gave it to him. Now, I am about to buy a house again. This seemed to be an apocryphal moment, but....
Later that day, I was driving my car back home after having jump-started it for the second time--this time to buy a new battery for way more than I wanted pay. As I grumbled to myself about the battery and its cost driving back home, I was glaring through the windshield at the mess on it. What was it that I was struggling to see the road through? Well, it was white, sort of, and splattered over most of it. The place we have lived in for the past couple of years has no garage, so the car is parked beneath a large live oak, which shelters birds of all sorts throughout the year, and well, you get the idea, my windshield view was obscured by a lot of bird "stuff." I knew the cause of my sh***y outlook on life today, in more ways than one. Was this another apocryphal moment? Nope, apocryphal really means fictitious or erroneous. The word people like me who use it--or misuse it--these days, really are looking for the word epiphany--'a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.” I thought these were apocryphal moments (little ones) but they were really minor epiphanies. Oh well. What's in a name?
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