Ya know, I need to start reading the Wreck more carefully.
This gem slipped right on by me and would have done so forever if I had not had a phone conversation with the sage O'Deen wherein I asked if he had been frequenting the Wreck at all.
Dude was kind to me and didn't even call me twelve different kinds of DMF's or nuthin'.
My onliest excuse is that I had blown out my Agent hookup to Uselessnet and then didn't download the 250,000 plus messages that were available when I started up again.
That being said, let's talk about toolbelts.
When I was naught but a pube in the carpenter bidness we had no workbelts.
We had canvas work aprons that were given to us by those same kind folks that gave us the free carpenter's pencils and free yellow keels.
We were encouraged (required) to carry a scriber, tape, pencil, chalkline, utility knife, fat and thin nailsets, etc. on our person at all times.
The Help Wanted ads and The Daily Racing Form were optional, although you could not tell this from simple observation of the alleged carpenters on my worksites.
As the world moved on and the kind people who had given us all that nice free shit were driven out by the Borg ( "You are now Borg - you are not Lumber Yards - you will be approximated") we found that our canvas aprons were becoming threadbare.
My first move, and I believe myself to be representative of my contemporaries, was to go to Sears.
Yeah, you can say all you want about that proto-wannabe-borg Sears but they made at least three good tools during the seventies: Catspaws, Wonderbars, and Toolbelts.
You may note that none of these tools had moving parts.
Let's move on.
IIRC my first leather belt from Sears was a basic Two Pocket with a Hammer Loops on both sides and a Leather and Metal Holster for the Combo Square located on the wrong side for a left-handed carpenter.
It also had these cute little cubbies for a couple of nailsets and a special section for the utility knife.
ARE WE NOT MEN. NO, WE ARE DEVO.
I wore out a couple of those suckers (wiping the snot off the end of a caulk tube onto the belt eventually makes the thing look so bad that even a cheap bastuhd of the third degree needs to buy new. You wind up looking like a walking Jackson Pollock trunk painting.)
Well, the Eighties came and California Carpenters were being featured in all the high-toned East Coast rags (FHB).
Had to have one.
Yeah, you know what I mean - Occidental Leather - the Sine Qua Non of the modern carpenter bubba.
It had four pockets, a holster for the combo square, a loop for the catspaw, four little pockets for nailsets and such, a place for a pencil, a place for a keel, a hammer holster that would go on either side of the belt.
And that sonofabitch weighed about forty pounds when you loaded it all up.
The leather was thicker than that on my workboots and the belt was wide enough to make me go out and buy new jeans.
But, if I could make it to the top of the ladder under all that weight, I could do anything from setting a nail to fixing a damned aricraft carrier.
You need to be a strong young man to wear one of these belts.
As I got older, and shorter, from wearing the belt, I implemented adaptive strategies.
Of course, this meant a trip to the Occidental Leather Accessories area of the catalogue.
First, I got the Lambs Wool padded undergarment for the belt, "Guaranteed to distribute the weight of your Occidental Leather belt in the most effective way."
This seemed to work for a bit but then my knees started to give out, so I went back to the Occidental Leather Accessories area of the catalogue and bought the suspenders.
"Shoulder Pads with real Lamb's Wool padding to redistribute the load of your Occidental Leather Toolbelt from your ruined knees to your soon-to-be-ruined back."
Hell yes - I bought 'em!
They and the other appurtenances of the Occidental Leather Toolbelt damned near killed me over the next few years.
Having started out at six foot one and now being at about five foot ten, I thought long and hard about further adaptive strategies.
I was bone tired from carrying around fifteen pounds of toolbelt leather to hold five pounds of tools
I was still pissed that they had not solved the problem of how to carry the Wonderbar (I would stick it in the space between the loop of the bag and the belt, and then holler, "Look out below" when I climbed a ladder.)
I went out and bought a pair of Oshkosh Bib Carpenter's Overalls.
Best damned thing I ever did.
The OBCO is basically the same damned thing as what I started out with
- a cloth apron that only held as much as a normal man would need to do his work - and it had loops on both sides for hammers and such.
It had slots for pencils on the bib, which is where they should be, and a pocket for your glasses, because, by the time you decide that you are ready to wear OBCO's, you need to wear glasses, and carry less weight around in your life.
It made dressing for work in the morning so much easier.
I wore OCBO's until my last day in the shop.
Then I went to buy another pair for me to wear around puttering - and found out that they had gone out of business.
I guess I got out of the game just in time.
The Occidental Leather toolbelt and All Of Its Appurtenances hangs on a nail in my shop.
It makes me tired even to look at it.
I keep all the heavy stuff in toolboxes - where it belongs.
ARE WE NOT MEN. NO, WE ARE DEVO.
Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)