HE SAT on a metal folding chair in the small shop’s entry. Rather imposing and gruff in his appearance, it seemed that he closely guarded an age old treasure housed within the portals of the small country machine shop. Behaving like I was about to walk on hallowed ground, I parked my pickup beside a very light pink ‘30s vintage coupe. I glanced over the pale color of the car as I slowly got out of the driver’s seat and called to him.

 “Are you Joe? I came to pick up something that was machined.”

 The car seemed out of place here in this backwoods hollow. I peeked in at the rolled and pleated interior as I passed by the coupe door. 

 “Are you Tom?” he asked.

 Feeling the question had put us on a first name basis, I said smilingly “Yep.., is the coupe yours?”

 Scratching lightly at the right side of the small patch of reddish hair crowning his balding head, Joe turned and looked into the doorway. Without answering, he got up, folded his chair, and waved his hand for me to come in.

Walking with his hands stuffed into the side pockets of the bib coveralls, he continued, “You here to get the crankshaft? I’ve been waiting for you for ten minutes or so. It’s a good thing I had more work to do here in the cave or I wouldn’t be here.”

 He walked deep into the dark shop’s interior. After my afternoon eyes adjusted from being in the bright sunlight outside the door, I could now see him beneath a fluorescent light that hung from the ceiling back in the corner of the shop,

Hardened of Heart? Whether wear resistant, tough or tempered, carrying modern loads depends a bit on how you’re quenched.

 

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 Joe stood with a machinist’s apron tied securely around his neck and coveralls. Since the apron was too short for the over six foot-tall stature it tried to shelter, he’d left the waist untied. The garment made him out to be ungainly. Apparently still wet from grinding fluid, his apron’s breast pocket held his metal scale, reading glasses, and a micrometer, The tools seemed that they were badges of his machinist trade.

 I nodded to him and said, “The woman I talked to on the phone said that it was just about ready to go.” Joe wiped his hands with a shop towel and switched the toothpick that he had in his mouth to the other side. “That was my wife, Ruthie. She owns that old pink  Ford.” He nodded toward the workbench and said, “I believe that’s what you want right over there.”

The crankshaft was cradled on a wooden crèche atop the bench alongside the back door. It had a red tag wired through the foremost main journal oiling hole. Joe walked over to the crank and looked at the tag. He then looked at me… “You named Beam?”

 “Yep, that’s me.” I said.

 He grinned a tad, took his toothpick from his lips and said, “Any relation to Jim?”

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus.  He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.  And Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed. (Matthew 27:57-60)