I submitted this piece to the publisher of Storied Stuff, collections of stories about things and their meaning. My story wasn’t chosen, so I’ll share it with you here.
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My mother's father was from a family of some renown in the region of Eastern Europe where they had lived for centuries. A distinguished 16th Century rabbi stands at the base of our Epstein family tree, all in Hebrew. Other prominent progeny are scattered among the branches. Accordingly, my great-grandfather, a pious man who had done well in the dry goods business (that his wife actually ran while he was busy studying Talmud), had high expectations for his four sons; high expectations until a jealous neighbor ratted on him for bribing a military draft official to get one of his sons, Grandpa's older brother Shmuel, “Mully,” out of the standard 20-year service obligation in Czar Nicholas' army. Jews didn't do well in the Russian military. The family fled Grodno, their hometown--ruled by Russia at the time, now in Belarus--in the middle of the night, with only what they could carry. They landed in Chicago in 1912. My grandfather, Chaim Yankel “Jack” Epstein, was 14 then.
Jack was not cut out for a life devoted to study and prayer. Anyway, he had to work. He helped out in the family's market on Division Street. He hawked candy in a movie theater. Eventually he landed a job as a printer's devil, a gofer in a print shop. He liked the work with the presses, especially the electrical parts. This led him to a career as a journeyman electrician. For as far back as anyone remembers, Grandpa was the only Epstein who made a living with his hands. He was very proud of his trade and of his union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Scarcity of construction during the Depression forced Grandpa to give up the electrical business. He still employed his considerable skills on weekends, fixing and installing stuff in the homes of his six siblings and their children. He often brought me along to “help,” while teaching me how to use his tools.
I inherited Grandpa's brace, a crank used to drive a bit into a piece of lumber, thereby drilling a big hole. He taught me how to work his brace and a bit in the basement of his apartment building, where he kept his tools in a workbench he'd constructed. He instructed me how to secure the bit in the brace's chuck then crank on it while pushing it into a piece of wood, which happened to be the wall of someone's personal storage shed. Though the holes I drilled did the shed no harm, it didn't need extra ventilation either.
Over the years I have had occasion to use the brace and most every one of the many tools Grandpa left to me. I chose to tell my story about this particular one because I understood, even as we drilled those holes about 70 years ago, that we'd done something a little naughty. And naughtiness is another treasured inheritance from my grandfather.
