I'm almost seventy-nine years old and had thought that I had written down all of my memories of being raised on the farm in the forties and fifties, but I was wrong. The other day the word "tinker" came to mind as I was watching my husband fiddling with something to get it to work the other day. Then I could see him plain as day; the tinker that would visit the farm hoping for some business from my mother to fix her pots pans, or the wash basins. The one I remember the most sat out on the front porch. My father or my grandfather had put together some boards to make a stand to hold the wash basin and some homemade soap that either my grandmother or my mother had made and was big enough for some old linen towels to dry off with.
There was a plank underneath that served only to make the top steady. That's what I am guessing because I don't remember that it served any other purpose. My mother would fill the wash basin with water from the well in the morning and the heat of the sun would warm it so that my father and any other of the neighbors could "scrub up" before coming in the house to eat an enormous meal that my mother had prepared. The wash basin table was on the front porch, however, the men would go to the pump and again rinse off before coming in to eat the huge thresher or baling meals my mother cooked so well. Their wet arms were of course, dried off on their overalls.
If my mother had a job for him, the tinker would get out his clay or mud in my imagination and put it on the outside of the basin where the porcelain was gone. I can remember thinking that it wasn't a very good fix.( I was probably five or six years old.) Then he would get out some kind of tool ( I now know it was a soldering gun) and put a shiny metal on the inside to fill the hole. After that metal cooled he would take his gloved hand and rub off the mud and would say, "There you go madam. That will be twenty-five cents." I can also remember her going to her little cloth change purse. It was black satin with frayed threads held together with a gold clasp. She would sort through the coins to get him his money. He would thank her and be on his way. It seemed that every time he would stop to repair something there would be a discussion between my mother and father if it was really necessary to spend money on a tinker. The idea of buying a new basin was out of the question. As I'm writing this I can remember my father's solution one time when the basin again needed repair. He was so proud as he showed my mother his handy work. He had put a washer and screw in the hole and ground it off smooth on the outside. I remember my mother telling him that that was the last time the basin would be repaired. With a warning to be careful when he washed his hands not to scrape his knuckles on the screw head on the inside of the basin.
As I was smiling to myself with my old old memories "tinker" brought up another memory We had tinker toys to play with! We would sit for hours and build houses and even people with our tinker toys.
One fun little anecdote about a tinker and his work the phrase "not worth a tinker's dam" is because of the mud like stuff the tinker would put on the outside of a pot then would discard after the solder had cooled because it was worth nothing. How many times I have heard that and never put the old tinker together with how he did his work for my mom and many others along his route.
