To a mechanic, there is nothing more ubiquitous than the red shop rag. I have, probably, three thousand. I package them in old Wal-Mart bags and when they are all filthy, I wash them at a work clothes washer at a laundromat.

I have them everywhere. They show up in my sock drawer. I always roll one up and tuck it behind the battery in the truck, so I can check oil. I have a dozen with a tube of waterless hand cleaner in the truck’s emergency kit. They line the drawers of my toolbox. They wrap, oily, around pistols and gun parts.

When dad died, the boys at Ford, not without some ceremony, presented me with his toolbox and the contents of his locker. Toolboxes are very personal, and contain the tools that person finds most useful, in the specific job they do. Like my father before me, I work in automation, only the type of automation he used was a full generation behind what I do, and the gap widens daily.

Anyway, I took the keys to dad’s toolbox and opened it, packed a few of my own extra or large tools in the toolbox, and slid it down to the basement where it rests, most of the time. Yesterday, one of the things I needed out of dad’s toolbox was a slidehammer I put there a year or so ago, and as I pulled it out, a red rag fell out onto the floor.

I picked it up- because it had clunked softly as it fell, which red rags just don’t do- and unrolled it to find dad’s pipe.
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