5B

I had believed that my many experiences with Uncle Zeb had taught me everything I would possibly need to know about him. It was only when I walked into his shop that I realized how little I had actually known. What I had known about Uncle Zeb could fit on a single page. He had always been relatively quick to repair any damages to my home, from a loose cabinet door to a leaking faucet. The tools he carried seemed to always look like the tools any man would have stored somewhere in the depths of their home. In other words Uncle Zeb always appeared to be a sort of convenient person to call when the chips were down and several pipes in your house had exploded.

Just another man. That had been my intial impression.

When I first walked into his shop, the first thing that met me was how clean it was. Uncle Zeb himself always seemed to have grease or wood chippings or something of that sort covering his clothing after any sort of work. But this ship, his pride and joy, was perfectly organized. Tools that I didn't have a name for were placed in nearly perfect rows. They weren't just organized by shape but similar uses. Curiousity prompted me to investigate. Pulling open drawers revealed screwdrivers of varying sizes and shapes labeled and placed in rows, smallest to largest. Hammers were neatly hung with different heads and different sizes.

It was chaotic in that I had no idea what some of the tools were and therefore would have no idea how to organize them, but I figured that to him this was organized.

A list of jobs had been tacked onto a board nearby the largest table. Even the names were neatly written. It seemed that Uncle Zeb, although not one for his own neatness, was certainly a stickler for organization in his shop.

I had thought he was just a jack-of-all-trades, but I had been wrong. He was more then that - an artisan, a craftsman.