rivett608
Diamond
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2002
- Location
- Kansas City, Mo.
I want to share a Christmas story from 50 years ago about a young Teenager and a Vise. It was either 1969 or 1970.
Chapter 1, THE VISE: 50 years ago a vise like this was considered backwards since the back jaw moved to open and close it instead of the front jaw. It was made in Poland of all places and back then, before people though about political correctness or other peoples’ feelings, there were a lot of jokes about anything from Poland. So those who remember that age can just imagine the comments this would have drawn. The vise was made of a European design that is still being made in Germany and among the finest vises I have ever seen. This 3” jaw vise was marked FPU standing for Fabryka Przyrazow Uchwytow. It was very well made, had much less play and was a lot heavier than to standard vises of the time.
Chapter 2, THE YOUNG TEENAGER: That would be me about 13 years old. I was the typical 1960s kid growing up surrounded by Hobby Shops, there were 8 within 20 minutes of our family home just outside Washington, D.C. I had played with and made all sorts of models, slot cars, trains, you name it. On my first day in 7th grade at the Junior High School I walked into Shop Class. It was a life changing event, I quickly learned you could make things from scratch, and with skills and tools, make anything. This came as a shock to me, my dad was a Businessman and later an upper level Bureaucrat and his few household tools were junk. I loved shop class, by the next year I was taking 2 periods of shop a day! At home, my parents gave me a little corner of the basement when we moved to a new house in 1963, along with the old kitchen table to build model kits on. This became MY WORKSHOP. I built a bench, I found old rusty tools and cleaned them up to use. But like any shop it needed a vise.
Chapter 3, THE STORE: A few miles from our home was Wheaton Plaza, one of the first shopping malls in the country. It was built in the late 1950s, at each end were the anchors, a two-story Woodies and a Wards. Wards had a nice tool department and I knew it well by then. Between them was a open air plaza with one-story stores down each side with a fountain in the middle. The stores all had a door facing the huge parking lot and another door into the plaza. At Christmas this was decorated and turned into a Holiday village complete with Santa and music blaring throughout the season. In December the crowds would bustle about under the wide overhangs while the snow drifted down through the open roof. Wheaton Plaza was the place to go in D.C. during the Holidays. Now, as a kid at Christmas this was way better than the Sears Catalog, we would spend the time after Halloween shopping for all those things we would want to put on our Christmas list. Next to Wards was a local hardware store named Hechinger’s which at that time had 3 or 4 stores in the D.C. area. Later this company was to expand nationwide into a big box store before being swallowed up by Lowes and Home Depot. There, on the bottom shelf was just one dusty, strange-looking Polish vise. I was immediately attracted to its unusual design that made so much sense to me. I guess when it comes to tools, I have clearly been that way since an early age. I had to have it, even if it was the only thing on my Christmas list that year! My recollection is it was priced between $13 and $15 which was a lot of money to a 13 year old kid.
Chapter 4, THE SALES PITCH: This vise is what I wanted. I knew that but I had to make sure mom and dad knew that and wouldn’t forget. The store only had this one, I had asked all about it probably more than once. By now the dust from that bottom shelf was covered with fingerprints, all mine. Now each time we went to Wheaton Plaza I had to drag either mom or dad over to Hechinger’s to show them, it’s THIS ONE. As November turned into December it was still there and I was getting worried as that was really all I wanted for Christmas. On the Saturday afternoon before Christmas my sister, 6 year older than me, was driving up to Wheaton Plaza for some last minute shopping. She had a drivers license and often was tasked with shuttling her younger brothers around in the family’s 2nd car, a 1962 Ford Galaxy 500 convertible 2 door*. If only we still had that car. I tagged along for the sole reason to make one last push on the vise and show her so she could make sure that mom and dad knew that that was the one I had to have. As I took her to that very spot in the store where it had sat for those months, all that was there was an empty shelf with a outline in the dust where the vise of my dreams had been. I was a crushed little boy. When the clerk came over to ask if he could help us I blurted out “who bought that vise that was sitting right here”. He answered that it had just sold that morning and he could look it up as the hand written yellow carbon copies of the sales tickets were still on his tool counter. He thumbed through them and said “a Mr. Robertson bought that vise”.
It was a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and I hope yours is as good this year as that was for 50 years ago!
And Yes, I still have it the vise.
*A little side note about this car, dad had bought this car as the kids car to passed down as we each came of driving age. He got a really good deal because the convertible top had a big hole above the passengers seat and was too expensive to fix. So in the winter one would shovel the snow out from around the car and then shovel off the seat to sit down. The car lasted through just 2 of the us 3 kids, I didn’t get drive it, at least legally, being the youngest.
Chapter 1, THE VISE: 50 years ago a vise like this was considered backwards since the back jaw moved to open and close it instead of the front jaw. It was made in Poland of all places and back then, before people though about political correctness or other peoples’ feelings, there were a lot of jokes about anything from Poland. So those who remember that age can just imagine the comments this would have drawn. The vise was made of a European design that is still being made in Germany and among the finest vises I have ever seen. This 3” jaw vise was marked FPU standing for Fabryka Przyrazow Uchwytow. It was very well made, had much less play and was a lot heavier than to standard vises of the time.
Chapter 2, THE YOUNG TEENAGER: That would be me about 13 years old. I was the typical 1960s kid growing up surrounded by Hobby Shops, there were 8 within 20 minutes of our family home just outside Washington, D.C. I had played with and made all sorts of models, slot cars, trains, you name it. On my first day in 7th grade at the Junior High School I walked into Shop Class. It was a life changing event, I quickly learned you could make things from scratch, and with skills and tools, make anything. This came as a shock to me, my dad was a Businessman and later an upper level Bureaucrat and his few household tools were junk. I loved shop class, by the next year I was taking 2 periods of shop a day! At home, my parents gave me a little corner of the basement when we moved to a new house in 1963, along with the old kitchen table to build model kits on. This became MY WORKSHOP. I built a bench, I found old rusty tools and cleaned them up to use. But like any shop it needed a vise.
Chapter 3, THE STORE: A few miles from our home was Wheaton Plaza, one of the first shopping malls in the country. It was built in the late 1950s, at each end were the anchors, a two-story Woodies and a Wards. Wards had a nice tool department and I knew it well by then. Between them was a open air plaza with one-story stores down each side with a fountain in the middle. The stores all had a door facing the huge parking lot and another door into the plaza. At Christmas this was decorated and turned into a Holiday village complete with Santa and music blaring throughout the season. In December the crowds would bustle about under the wide overhangs while the snow drifted down through the open roof. Wheaton Plaza was the place to go in D.C. during the Holidays. Now, as a kid at Christmas this was way better than the Sears Catalog, we would spend the time after Halloween shopping for all those things we would want to put on our Christmas list. Next to Wards was a local hardware store named Hechinger’s which at that time had 3 or 4 stores in the D.C. area. Later this company was to expand nationwide into a big box store before being swallowed up by Lowes and Home Depot. There, on the bottom shelf was just one dusty, strange-looking Polish vise. I was immediately attracted to its unusual design that made so much sense to me. I guess when it comes to tools, I have clearly been that way since an early age. I had to have it, even if it was the only thing on my Christmas list that year! My recollection is it was priced between $13 and $15 which was a lot of money to a 13 year old kid.
Chapter 4, THE SALES PITCH: This vise is what I wanted. I knew that but I had to make sure mom and dad knew that and wouldn’t forget. The store only had this one, I had asked all about it probably more than once. By now the dust from that bottom shelf was covered with fingerprints, all mine. Now each time we went to Wheaton Plaza I had to drag either mom or dad over to Hechinger’s to show them, it’s THIS ONE. As November turned into December it was still there and I was getting worried as that was really all I wanted for Christmas. On the Saturday afternoon before Christmas my sister, 6 year older than me, was driving up to Wheaton Plaza for some last minute shopping. She had a drivers license and often was tasked with shuttling her younger brothers around in the family’s 2nd car, a 1962 Ford Galaxy 500 convertible 2 door*. If only we still had that car. I tagged along for the sole reason to make one last push on the vise and show her so she could make sure that mom and dad knew that that was the one I had to have. As I took her to that very spot in the store where it had sat for those months, all that was there was an empty shelf with a outline in the dust where the vise of my dreams had been. I was a crushed little boy. When the clerk came over to ask if he could help us I blurted out “who bought that vise that was sitting right here”. He answered that it had just sold that morning and he could look it up as the hand written yellow carbon copies of the sales tickets were still on his tool counter. He thumbed through them and said “a Mr. Robertson bought that vise”.
It was a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and I hope yours is as good this year as that was for 50 years ago!
And Yes, I still have it the vise.
*A little side note about this car, dad had bought this car as the kids car to passed down as we each came of driving age. He got a really good deal because the convertible top had a big hole above the passengers seat and was too expensive to fix. So in the winter one would shovel the snow out from around the car and then shovel off the seat to sit down. The car lasted through just 2 of the us 3 kids, I didn’t get drive it, at least legally, being the youngest.
