Pluggers by Rick McKee for December 17, 2012

I know the feeling well. I inherited my grandfathers collection and junk drawer, and it’s still true.

do not forget you have a ton of them but you got to the hardware store to buy some because none of the ones you have work

Also, if you need three, you must buy a package of 10, adding to your collection. Of course, five of those seven will migrate to wherever socks go.

I’d rate it higher, but in the top ten is satisfying.

Oh yeah, we have that collection!

same here for that collection.

Yup. I even have a jar my dad passed on. That one has to be 75+

well i definitely qualify for ‘plugger hood’ cause i have an old 1lb Chock Full o’Nuts coffee can – must be 50 yrs old at least. I still have the little scoops that came with it and use them every day! thanks for this one!!

You should see his wife’s button collection.

In the shop I worked in, this collection was called “the million dollar can” because every so often you found just the right screw, bolt, nut or whatsis you needed and that was worth a million dollars (or so it felt).

The new coffee cans aren’t even metal anymore!

I’ve inherited my dad’s and it is in an old METAL Sir Walter Raleigh Pipe Tobacco can. Of course, I also have a can of my own for the odds and ends I have, but mine is a cardboard can that had Sir Walter Raleigh in it.

Sorting nuts, bolts and washers was my job as a kid at my Dad’s shop. I guess it kept me busy and he knew where I was.

If he kept all his miscellaneous nuts, bolts, screws, etc. in separate little baby food jars like my husband does, he’d always know what he has and where it is.

Nowadays you can’t get hardware at a hardware store unless it is pre-packaged in more than you need. We lost our last real hardware store a couple years ago. You could take in a tiny nut and say “I need a one-inch round-head bolt to fit this.” It would take them two minutes to have it on the nut and charge you three cents. Capitalism wipes out free enterprise.

When my step mother dies, I will have to sort out my dad’s shed. I bet I find my old die cast model cars from the sixties. I know he got rid of his dentist’s drill (ancient – but he wasn’t a tooth doctor). There is a rather magnificent RAAF metal trunk full of odds and ends but I’ve got nowhere to put it..Why don’t houses expand to accommodate the inhabitants’ possessions?

Not to mention that my “Hell Box” has mostly US standard threaded stuff in it and most of what we need nowadays is metric threaded.