These are some of my Grandpa Irving’s tools. From the time I first saw them as a kid, I hoped they’d be my inheritance. They were all I wanted. Not the diamonds this big from out of Bubbe’s ear. For you, if you’re good. They cost me, she told me every time she saw me, a pretty penny. I didn’t want her jewelry. I didn’t want the sterling silver. All I wanted were these tools. These ancient precision calipers that can measure anything within a hair’s breadth. This one is called a vernier. It’s designed to measure the inside and outside dimension of a cylinder.

 

Grandpa was a tool and die maker, a machinist. He was apprenticed at age 12. He made a fortune through the Depression inventing the tools with which they made gold watchcases (They never saw a Jew with hands like these.) He retired in the 50s—went on to do taxes, real estate, commodities. But all along and even now, at age 98, he still has these hands of genius.

 

About ten years ago, I watched him repair one of those fancy wooden Father’s Day shoehorns with a brass lion on one end and the shoe horn thing on the other. You or I would have just stuck some glue in the thing and then thrown it away when it didn’t stick.

 

But my Grandfather Irving used this micrometer to measure drill bits, so he could make holes the perfect size for the long skinny brass screws. Then with another tool, he measured the threads of the screws to make sure they matched the threads of the tiny brass nuts he would use at either end of the screw, which he cut to fit, which put the brass lion back where it belonged. And I say to him:

 

Grandpa, do you think it would maybe be okay if, like—once you no longer need these tools—if maybe I could have them?

 

I know. Why don’t I just say “Grandpa, when you die, can I have your tools?” But my grandfather is so timid about his own mortality that ever to speak of it directly... You just don’t do that.

 

And Grandpa looks at me—his aging girl grandchild—who by rights should have given him great-grandchildren by now.

 

What in God’s name do you want from them? These tools.

 

They’re beautiful. They’re a treasure. You could teach me to use them.

They’re you.

 

A couple of months later, Grandpa sold his tools. To a collector in Newark, New Jersey. For $250. My dad broke the news. He called from Pittsburgh, which is where my folks live. He knew I wanted the tools and was worried I might see them in a store window in Newark, New Jersey, and get upset.

 

So I call the guy who bought the tools, I arrange to visit him in Newark, New Jersey, and I buy them back. Two thousand, seven hundred thirty-seven dollars. Cash.

 

Now that’s a pretty penny.

 

 

 

 

This is a do-it-yourself kind of place. You type your family name into the computer and it gives you a code number. C250. This defines a category of names which sound sort of like Chaiken. And this is extremely helpful for people whose family names got changed at Ellis Island to something easier that sounds sort of close to the original. So I'm wading through miles of microfilm of index cards with Kazins and Chapins and Capinskis and Ciacinis, and for the first time, I feel like I'm part of something. All these cards. All these names. All these people—Russian, Polish, Irish, Italian... All of them braving the ocean to start a new life. My people have to be here somewhere.