My dad and I were repairing the threshold of an outbuilding on his old chicken farm.
We pounded, and puzzled. Dad stood back and scratched his head.
“Go over by the barn,” he said. “Clear all that brush aside – there’s some old cobblestones underneath it…”
Sure enough – buried under 20-years’ growth of grape vines and bittersweet thicket -- was a pile of cobblestones.
They'd been lying dormant in that spot for years – brought there, undoubtedly, by Old Man Sherman – who lived here until the 1970s.
Sherman probably came upon a crew tearing up perfectly good cobblestones to smooth the way for blacktop.
And being from New England, he probably thought, ‘be jaysus, those might come in handy.’
Somebody clever said once that if all of New England had a single license plate motto it would be “It Might Come in Handy.”
We slid one of Sherman’s cobblestones right into the gap between the granite step and the wooden threshold. You couldn’t have cut it to fit better.
And there it remains, coming in wicked Handy.
My father loves that kind of repair job. He is a fourth-generation New Englander, and a master of that unique brand of New England alchemy: He can build or repair almost anything from a pile of scrap.
When we needed to raise the television up to accommodate the crowd that had gathered to watch Game 4 of the World Series, my dad showed up with a load of scrap lumber. Inside an hour, we had a five-foot television stand, visible from every corner of the front room.
He doesn’t aim for perfection. When he’s satisfied, he’ll stand back, survey his work and say: “Good enough for a town this size.”
And then he’ll pile up whatever’s leftover – because it might come in handy.
My dad can tell you a building’s genealogy the way some people recite names of their ancestors.
The outbuilding with the new cobblestone threshold boasts a classic New England lineage.
The porch door, oddly narrow and off-level, was rescued from a demolition project. The floor joists had a past life in a shed across town, and the inside staircase is a former bookshelf.
Before it migrated to its current location, the building was a tiny diner five miles down the road.
It eventually fell out of use, but – since it was a shame to tear something down that might come in handy -- somebody hauled the building up here and deposited it behind Sherman’s house.
And before it was a restaurant… it was flotsam.
In 1954, Hurricane Carol had spit this building up onto East Beach – where the people who opened the restaurant found it.
“Hey – look at this. This might come in handy.”
My parents live in the museum of It Might Come in Handy.
The barn still holds acres of Old Man Sherman’s stuff. You never go to the hardware store without first checking the inventory of the barn.
Wooden salt cod boxes are perfect for keeping nails; there are old augers and buckets and coils of ever-useful bailing twine.
The old liquor thermometer we kept because, you never know. Prohibition might be reinstated. It might come in handy.
The main house at my parents’ place – if you can call a three-room Cape a “main house” – was built around 1820.
When the historical society came around with one of those plaques indicating its vaunted place in the town’s history, ours said “Jonathan Sowle, debtor.” My dad, in preparing the house for a paint job, relocated the sign to the outhouse.
And Jonathan Sowle, worthy New Englander, knew all about “It Might Come in Handy.”
When we pulled down the plaster ceiling to expose the old beams, we discovered curious notches in them. Notches that bore no relation to the house construction.
This sturdy little house was built, lo those 185 years ago -- with used lumber.
It came in handy.
