Last year I was coming down a street near my son's apt., on the edge of the inner part of the city, along a street where there are a lot of offices, when I saw an interesting looking cabinet, put out with the garbage.

Circled back a few blocks.

It was a dentist's chair-side cabinet, with doors on the bottom of about a 2-foot square cabinet, with a space above where a drawer had been, and a flat top covering about 2/3 of the size of the cabinet, with a tray just below it that slides out on rollers. There are casters on the bottom.

It sat in the hatch of my car for about a week, when landlord's son came by one day and helped me carry it to my landlord's newly-minted shop. I told him that if his Dad didn't want it, that I'd use it.

His Dad loves it.

My old step-uncle, after having had 3 hip replacements, had painful back, hip and leg, and was reasonably well off but had cattle in the barn in his mid 80s, though he'd had no kids with two wives. On the death of his wife 5 years ago, we feared that, as he refused to wear one of those emergency call buttons, he might fall into a snowbank and be unable to get up, so I spent a couple of months with him until his cattle went to pasture.

A couple of years later he died and I travelled almost daily about 12 miles from the city to have the house look lived in, to avoid damage.

Th farm was sold to a sod farmer, who offered to rent the house to me, at much lower rent than I'd paid in the city, but I had to carry water for drinkiing and cooking, as the well was too close to the former barnyard ... which didn't trouble me, as I've done that before in my life (plus had to boil every bit that we used, for upwards of 10 years when I lived in what had been a war zone, helping refugees get back on their feet).

The sod farmer, who repairs equipment in the winter, had had to repair it in the cold, as he'd never had a closed-in shop. He put gravel, then smooth concrete as the floor of a large shed with two large doors here, then installed insulation, a woodstove and power and water: a fairly major project. He loves his new shop.

He has a fairly large number of wrenches, some of them rather large, which he installed on the top and the tray of the cabinet, and can wheel it around wherever he needs it in the shop, so is happy as a clam with his "new" cabinet, which keeps his wrenches within easy reach.

Asked me how much he owed me ... I told him I'd charge what I paid: nothing.

He's a very busy, able ... and a very nice ... man, who's involved in a number of community-service agencies, as well as his own business.

ole joyful