Passing through Lawrence, Kansas, this afternoon, the home of the K U Jayhawks, I happened on a sign pointing me to a garage sale on Arkansas Street.
Didn't know where Arkansas Street was, but found it after a couple of misses and some street construction.
The site was a run-down trailer at the end of the street. Looked hopeless.
But I always ask if the seller has any other tools, bent rusty junky tools that nobody else wants. The old gentleman said he had a bucket with four old Crescent wrenches that I could take a look at. He dug through an old shed behind his house and came up with a bucket with four completely roached pipe wrenches and about three pounds of tools. The wrenches had goo on them at one time, and so he soaked them in battery acid for a while and never got around to painting them red like he originally intended.
I thanked him for his effort and asked if there was anything else.
Yes, he said, there was another bucket in still another shed. What the heck. I will look at anything. It was another bucket of assorted nuts and bolts and offshore sockets and just general junk.
And an old auto hub cap wrench and ten pressed steel Diamond M Mossberg pressed steel sockets in beautiful condition!
Ranging in size from 5/16 through 1 9/32". And two other pressed steel sockets that fit the hub cap wrench. I assume they fit a lug nut and spark plug.
$2.00
And that doesn't count the haul from Topeka this morning: a nice Ford plow wrench and King Dick 7" Ford monkey wrench and the 8182 Plomb double offset box end wrench and a few other odds and ends: a Heller ball peen hammer, 3 black handle Vlchek nut drivers, a pair of Swedish Eskilstuda pliers, a pair of Bridgeport pliers, and an unmarked pair that have the rope band handle pattern used by Wilde Tools, one of the few toolmakers here in Kansas.
Topeka is an old town (by prairie standards) and it is full of goodies!
