h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Charlotte, North Carolina – 14 August, 2006

I opened the rear storage compartment on the outside of the RV last night and the toolbox was gone. The compartment has been locked since we left Tampa, so it had to have been stolen there.

It was a nice collection of metric and standard ¼ and ½ inch socket wrenches as well as box, open end and Allen wrenches. There were a few nice touches like the mirror on a swivel for looking around corners. Everything was neatly separated in freezer bags so there was no need to fumble finding the correct wrench.

I bought the toolkit for Ken in 1972. He was down on his luck again and needed the toolkit and money for a ticket to England to work on Bell helicopters. He was fired from that job after hitting a factory representative in the head with a wine bottle at a reception. Eventually, he was deported from England as an undesirable character after being arrested following a fight in a pub. He gave me the toolkit as partial payment for the loan. It had everything you might need to repair a helicopter.

I met Ken in High School. He was a football and track star and academically very talented. He joined the US Marines in 1960. I ran into him again at the University in Tallahassee in 1965 and became his roommate for a time. He took me to a cast party in November, 1965 where I met Carol. Carol’s date and Ken went home alone that night.

In 1968, after graduation, he went to Viet Nam again, this time as a civilian F-4C mechanic. He came back a year later with his alcoholism in full bloom and a nasty heroin habit.

Over the years, as my life became stable, he would drop by to visit us about once a year and borrow money. He took to using our address permanently to receive mail. Once a year I would help him with taxes. Sometimes we would drink together, but I stopped doing that after we got in a drunken fistfight one day and I bit off a piece of his ear. He often lived in a cardboard box and sometimes worked on a tugboat.

In 1996, I got a call from Morgan City, Louisiana. Ken had died in his sleep. His employer, a tugboat company, asked me for help disposing of the remains. Over the years, the toolbox always brought back memories of Ken when I needed a wrench. Carol wants me to buy more tools, but they won’t be replacements.

You know, Phred, all of your writing I love to read, but some of it I can really relate to.

Keep at it. You're quite an inspiration.

Pin

This one brought a tear to my eye, Phred. I think there's a Ken in everyone's life and he's put there for a reason.

Sorry about the tool kit. You can buy more, but it won't replace the memories.

What Pin said.

You've reminded me of my brother. Who is still alive, I think.

You've given Ken's memory some immortality here, Bob.

Tools have a way of carrying the mood of previous users...I had a pair of lineman's pliers that I had inherited from another electrician...cool guy...didn't know him more than a week before he PCSed, but his vibe was in the pliers. Got stolen.

I hope that wasn't the same kind of PSC that Ken had...I had a pair of wire-cutters from an electrician who use the to cut a live 220 line...the missing parts always reminded me of him.

On the good side, I have another set of tools inside the RV, drill, drill bits, hammers, multi-meter, screwdrivers, wire-strippers, hacksaw, tape measures, vice-grips, adjustable wrenches, bubble level, screws, picture hangars, electrical tape, piano wire, WD-40 and other handy things...the motorcycle also has a complete set of metric tools in the saddlebags.

Writing about Ken took the edge off the missing tools for some reason.

I could write a book about Ken:
- There was the time he got irritated with another friend and took a dump in his shower.
- Once he caught another friend with his wife and beat him badly with the baby's tricycle.
- We left him alone in our house for a weekend to go diving and came back to a house full of derelicts.
- He came back to our house drunk and confused and broke into the neighbor's place and went to sleep on his couch...the neighbor was a VP for the biggest bank in town.
- Once he got a broken beer bottle in the throat and almost died...a bad habit of drinking and getting loud and in your face will do that for you

But he was very bright and we both liked and trusted him implicitly when he was sober..we never sensed a mean side to him at all...ever. He had three real brothers who stopped talking to him 20 years before he died...

...the tool kit was missing a few things anyway...a 10mm box end for one thing...

Every electrician has a pair of dikes (sidecutters) with the signature markings of a 'journeyman arc welder'. Trust me.

No, his PCS (Permanent Change of Station) was not of the terminal kind, but the military kind. I was stationed at Torrejon as apprentice electrician, and learned the ropes there.

10mm box -- there was a time I had 4 in my toolbox at the same time. Got stolen.

I wonder if it's possible to put a charm on ones tools, to curse whomever steals them.

Dear Mr and Mrs Phred,

What a tragic story.

He appeared to have so much - but just lacked something.
But he did introduce you to one another and that is great.

And now the one thing that he had "given" you ( in repayment of a loan) has gone.

You were such good friends to him and I am sure that must have given him what security he had.

Did his ear heal? Or was there always a piece out of it?

With kind regards

Christiane AR1

I'm back in Tampa. I open the door to the small storage shed and find the toolbox, battery charger and air pressure pump where I placed them and forgot about it....

There was a local press release, recently, about a 'function' to be held in the village hall. The organising committee, Members of the Alzheimer's Support Group, in their wisdom, announced that it would be, "An evening to remember."

Long may you run. Cheers! ed.

Ouch!...I resemble that remark....

Glad you found them, Phred. Especially since they have sentimental value.