Bill loved gadgets and always wanted to be first to have them. He was among the first to try computers, which led him to migrate from the math department at school to start the computer classes.
One of the
gadgets he bought was a nail gun. This
was in the days before air nailers took over.
His nail gun used a .22 shell to drive a nail.
He got the idea
from a local carpenter-contractor who had one, so he wasn’t first in that
department, but he had to have one. His nail gun was a single shot model.
You had to load
the nail in the barrel, like a muzzle-loading gun. The nails came in different lengths and
sizes. There were different size .22
shells to use for different size nails.
Each nail had a
colored plastic fin on the tip. Each
size nail had a different color. You
sized the shell by the color of the plastic fin.
One of the biggest nails had a blue fin. The plastic fin, slightly larger than the
barrel diameter, held the nail in place until you set the powder off and
embedded the nail in the timber, quite handy, especially if you were nailing
with the gun pointing down.
You fired the gun
by striking it with a hammer, like a punch or chisel. Put the muzzle of the gun where you wanted
the nail, strike the hammer, and voila! You
had driven a nail with one light stroke of the hammer. Be sure to wear ear plugs. It was a gun firing, after all.
The plastic fin
that started out on the tip of the nail became sort of a washer between the
wood and the nail head. You could also
tell what size nail you had used by the color of the fin still visible mashed
in the wood around the nail head.
Bill had the gun,
but no project or place to use it. I was
working on putting a bathroom in the basement of our Page Street house. It was an open basement with no walls when we
moved in. We needed to nail some furring
strips to the cinder block exterior basement walls. The power nails worked fairly well.
There was also a
steel I-beam running lengthwise down the center of the basement to support the
center of the house. The I-beam was
supported by 4-inch steel pipes. I
needed to fasten a 2 X 4 to that pipe to support a wall and a pocket door for
the bathroom
Bill insisted I
use the power hammer on the block walls.
He couldn’t be there when I first tried out the power hammer. When he arrived, I suggested we try fastening
a 2 X 4 to the steel pipe using the power hammer.
He was all for
that. He also wanted to try out his
newest gadget for himself. I busied
myself working elsewhere in the small bathroom while Bill worked to nail the 2
X 4 to the pipe, or try to, anyway.
After a while,
the gun fired. The 2 X 4 slowly leaned
to one side and threatened to fall down.
The nail had failed to connect wood with steel.
Then I looked
more closely. Instead of the tip of the
nail being bent or broken projecting through the 2 X 4, what I saw was the nail
sticking a way out of the 2 X 4 on the gun side.
The blue fin of
the nail was right there, intact, unfazed, still in perfect shape. And still on the tip of the nail.
The head of the
nail was embedded in the 2 X 4, maybe half or three-quarters of an inch into
the wood.
Bill, never one
to read directions, had put the nail wrong-end-to into the gun barrel. Most of the nail stuck out from the 2 X 4 as
if sticking its tongue out at us.
We tried again
with the nail in the gun the right way, but the nails were no match for the
steel pipe. I don’t remember how I
fastened the 2 X 4 to the pipe.
What I do
remember is that Bill had to leave. It
was too good of a chance. I got some
paper and made a sign, “Beamgard’s Nail” printed in bold black letters, with an
arrow pointing up. I hung the paper on
the nail, still with the blue fin and nail tip protruding out of the 2 X 4, the
black arrow on the sign clearly leading the eye to the nail, the nail with the wrong end stuck in the wood.
I took a
picture. I don’t remember the
circumstances, but a few weeks later, after I got the film developed (you
remember those olden days when you had to mail in your roll of film and wait
for it to be returned by Kodak or some other developer) I showed it to Bill.
I am sure I did
it when it would embarrass Bill as much as possible. Sure enough, he was embarrassed. He wanted to destroy the picture, but I
assured him I had the negatives.
In the end, I
guess he got even with me when he turned the mag switch off and on while we
flying the Aeronca Champ.
