Now and then* Charlie will be confronted with small failures, disappointments and glitches caused largely by Things That Were Made Cheaply and Thoughtlessly.
A consummate machinist and tool-user and maker, he will not put up with these impediments for more than a minute or two. I hear the sequence in the shop: “squeak -squeak -squeak-saw-noise saw-noise, lathe humming, thing being popped out of a vise” etc.
And then he’ll come in the house with a broad smile, brandishing a Cleverbacon Solution To The Problem. Usually for no money, a bit of time and a lot of personal energy directed at using what’s at hand, not going to the local hardware store. A bit of sustainability thinking, and a lot of smug Hoarder’s Revenge.
A week ago our toilet acted up, and when he pulled the old rubber plunger from the closet (actually he needed me to locate it because that closet is very Fibber MGee) to massage the cloggage into submission, the thing wouldn’t work because the rubber was like wood. Antique. Rubber does that in a polluted environment, just hardens up and won’t conform the way it is supposed to.
I hopped on the bike with a wave of the hand, calling “I’m GOING TO THE HARDWARE STORE” to avert any objections. WHen I go to Fairfax Hoardware as a small time-saving service to Charlie, I inevitably come home with The Wrong Size, The Wrong Formula, The Wrong Something. It is the fate of us lesser beings, acolytes and camp followers , not being Engineers and all).
I was told I should get a strange accordion-thing that looked like a see-through single shock fork boot, made purely of plastic. It’s tough to think it would last long, and was so stiff it, too was non-conforming)…..the salesman said it was better because it forced more water through. I got the old fashioned rubber kind, too– just in case.
But when I got home, I found the solution curing in the sun.
Charlie’d replaced the wooden handle with a length of copper pipe, and put a knurled fitting for a hose at one end, and turned the tired plunger into a rubber funnel that shot water at high pressure into the toilet. Our plumber, Mike Schultz, turned us onto a fine product called “Through the Roof” which sealed the joint down around the rubber bulb…
In the end, I took the inferior pair of new plungers back (two trips are the norm around here, as I solve problem after problem the conventional way, and then solve the new problem of an unneccessary purchase). This is all so easy, gliding around a half mile here, a half mile there times two, three, sometimes much more.
With our savings we can now splurge on another year of Jan Heine’s fine Bicycle Quarterly.
Old, shitty, rusty and bent. What we usually have to put up with. Worst of all, too short!
The Real Deal Push-Pins for people who are easily disapPOINTed.
Then, a few days later, when he was trying to pin the cardboard in the habitat to keep sun out of his face, the worthless push pin he’d hoarded, a 5/8 ” hard-to-find longer than usual, bent as it went into the wooden roof.
Editor’s error : it was a Chinese imitation of a desirable American-made (and of course no longer produced) metal push pin he’d hoarded, and it was made of soft steel, not hardened, and the pin head was too small, etc.
Into the shop, and a couple hours later, out came the kind of custom push-pin, made with sharpened music wire which apparently has lots of great properties, namely unlikely to bend and deform, and nicely knurled handle with a rubber grip. Several lengths… behold. Note the shop motto. Make that the Life Motto. 
*make that daily
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