This story happened in the early 1970s, in the old candle studio. There was a beautiful hammer there — stainless steel, forged in one piece, with a perforated plastic handle. I’d never seen anything like it; the hammers I knew had a wrought-iron head and a wooden shaft. It was an object of real beauty, and I’d fallen a bit in love with it.

I had to go up a ladder — I was putting hardboard on the inside above a door — and I had a box of small tacks with me, there were maybe a thousand in the box. I’d take one out, bang it in and take another. Then I dropped the box! I thought, “here we go — tacks everywhere, all over the floor.” But as it fell, my arm moved by itself, and the box landed right in the claw of that hammer I’d been admiring. Only one or two tacks spilled out.

Did the hammer love me back, is there a soul in hammers? I still wonder about that.

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Photo Credit: Thank you to Andrew George on Unsplash