I used to love crossing the road from our place, my feet scrunching up the long gravel driveway, my focus, the sights and smells of Uncle Clive’s workshop. Shellac, or paint assaulted the nostrils, recently sawn lengths of timber were assembled, a lump of lard on the saw bench, a pile of old rags, furniture polish, all at the ready. I inhaled deeply as I entered his domain.
The bench was expectantly neat, albeit small piles of missed shavings. The handsaw, hammer, a plane and several screwdrivers on the bench suggested a new project.
A breathily whistled “The Surrey with the fringe on top” set the tempo for our friendly banter. “G’day Mister” he proffered, as I sauntered up to the bench, crunching a carrot, pulled, in passing from his extensive vegetable garden near the shed.
“Can I play with the screws, please” and in answer, he lifted me up onto the benchtop. I hummed in harmony, an octave above his tenor, as my gaze moved wondrously towards the jars hanging below the louvred, double window. The lid from each jar was secured, screwed into a length of timber that stretched back towards the wall. I just loved twisting and opening a jar, my nose crinkling as the residual smells wafted up.
Uncle Clive never threw old fixings away. “A good screw is a reward” he often remarked, years before such a double-entendre would raise eyebrows and a few knowledgeable chuckles. His storage jars held nails he’d straightened, bits of fuse wire, short coils of solder, brackets, small hinges. There were thin, inch-long nails, sometimes rusted into an amorphous blob. He showed me that with a gentle hammer tap, you could rekindle their individuality.
His storages included vegemite jars, with dozens of tiny screws, larger pickle jars, right through to round Christmas biscuit tins. They held the bigger sets of screws, flanges, nuts and bolts, hinges and whatnots, usually all wrapped into impregnated oilcloth.
Those glass jars never seemed to break, except when the one holding eight, 3” nails slipped through my fingers onto the concrete floor. We swept up the broken pieces and he found another big jar for the nails.
He showed me how to straighten the nails, holding them firmly by their tips, revolving and strategically tapping the metal on his old heavy blacksmith’s anvil, back into straight shafts. There were a few bruises, but over the years my proficiency improved!
We sang together often, and my ‘ear’ enabled me to comfortably match his tenor in melodic duets. The Mikado, Pinafore, South Pacific, Robeson’s Motherless Child, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Ol’ Man River. We knew all the lyrics.
Clive was a happy worker, and his perfectly pitched tenor voice won him an appreciative audience in the local eisteddfods. As a committed Communist, Paul Robeson’s songs were inspirational and he often played the 78s on the old HMV player in the corner. His tenor to Robeson’s bass, me holding the soprano melody. Our harmonies and descants filled the shed!