Bent Nails

I held the bent nail on top of the used brick with my first finger so the bend was straight up in the air. If the hammer hit it exactly right, the nail would partially straighten, if not the nail would go spinning off into the grass where it had to be found and hit again and again until it was as straight as when it was new. It was spring 1939 and I could make all the money I wanted by straightening nails at one cent per tomato soup can full! Before the nail could be straightened, it had to to be pulled from it's home in the big pine boards in the huge lumber pile in our back yard. Turn the board over and hammer the sharp point until the head backed out of the board far enough to get a grip on it with the "wrecking bar". Some days my father had to pay me as much as five cents, but I was only three years old and Planters peanuts were two cents a package and there was lots of penny candy. The nail straightening "job" was just a ploy to keep me out of the way during the construction of our new house. After the fire, my father bought an old church in town for $1200 dollars. He tore it apart brick by brick and board by board and then haulled all of the material over four miles by horse and wagon back to the farm. Next Blog "tarpaper shack'