My job takes me to a variety of locations. I’ve worked on mountain tops, deep underground below the foundations of complexes, where only dirt and rock is underfoot, to small attics, and fancy laboratories. Often though, my job takes me to more mundane structures, like high-rises or apartment penthouses. Just because they feel run-of-the-mill, does not mean that those buildings do not stick in my mind for one reason or another.
Some of them are secured in my mind because of the work I did, others, because there was someone whom I shared tea with, or a cute dog that just wanted petting, but there’s one site I’ll never forget because it’s where one of my tools was used as a murder weapon.
It started innocently enough. I’d worked on enough halfway houses and low–income buildings to fight through my middle-class bias. They are people who deserve as much love and respect as anyone, and when the air-handling unit that fed the ground floor failed, I went to site to fix it.
There were two ways inside the mechanical room. The painful way was to leave via the front door and walk ALL THE WAY around the outside of the building to where I was allowed to park my work vehicle. The other was much shorter: exit out the back stairwell, the same stairwell that the mechanical room opened into, but in order to keep the door open I had to jam it with something, because it only opened from the inside, and there was no key to open that exterior door as it was a rated fire escape.
It was evening, cold, and I needed my drill from my car. I was already in the stairwell, my vehicle was only about fifty feet from the side entrance, but it was out of sight of the doorway.
Back then, I wore a tool belt. I don’t now because Crohn’s disease leaves me easily agonized if I put too much force around my gut. Scrambling through my tools, I selected something beefy enough to hold the door open, my trusty FULLER Screwdriver.
Big Blue was special to me. As an installer, I had learned how to make a hole in tin using a screwdriver and a hammer. In order to make it easier, I had sharpened one corner of that giant tool until it was as keen as a good knife. It had served me well, and had stuck with me as I graduated from college, labored in the field, and moved on into controls. Like any good tool, it was multi-purpose. It could be a chisel, a pry bar, a tin cutter, and that moment, it was a glorious door stop.
Running to my car, I grabbed my hammer drill and extension cord, only to return and find that my screwdriver was GONE.
SOMEONE HAD GRABBED BIG BLUE!
But, to be fair, whoever had, at least had the decency to shove an old coat in the door, so I wasn’t locked out of the building in below-freezing weather.
Sighing at my own stupidity, I ran inside and finished the job.
I lamented the loss of Big Blue for a while, and bought a replacement large flat-head that I still have today, but the handle is soft rubber, and is wearing out.
Well, months go by, and I move on.
I tend not to watch TV, but I just so happened to have it on in the background one morning while making my breakfast, and I was reminded of Big Blue in an all too bitter fashion.
“A young man has been charged with homicide. Mr. ****** was a guest at a party when an argument became physical, and Mr. **** attacked his offender with a screwdriver and stabbed him to death.”
Glancing up from my scrambled eggs and toast, I very nearly did a spit-take all over the table. There, on the screen, was BIG BLUE in all its gory glory, and I knew it was mine because of a distinct band of scribing ink I had painted around the shaft.
My elation that Big Blue was found was immediately squashed by the realization that Big Blue was now a murder weapon.
I had missed that screwdriver, almost badly enough to waltz into the police station and demand my stolen tool be returned to me…
Almost
But even I don’t feel that privileged.
So I had to bid adieu to Big Blue again, but at least I have closure, and know what has become of my favorite screwdriver’s fate.