A tool for every season

PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

For those to whom Hashem has granted little in the way of tactile skills, duct tape has proved an invaluable tool for holding things together at all cost. The broad gray strips have proved adept at maintaining everything from k.d. lang's boots to the furniture in countless first apartments.

A similar binding role is played in bas cuisine with cream of mushroom soup which, about five decades ago, became the duct tape of North American cookery, unifying erstwhile heterogeneous ingredients into casseroles of relative palatability.

Where civilization seems not yet to have recognized its untapped resource is in the lowly staple gun. The handy household tacking instrument is the cream of mushroom soup and duct tape of home improvement, without which my house would be far less complete.

Since buying a new home three years ago, a staple gun has been the one tool that has permitted me to undertake more creative projects than I ever imagined myself capable of.

Of course, the staple gun, depending on how it is used, does not carry the same stigma as mushroom soup or duct tape. Martha Stewart, when she used to be on television on an hourly basis, used her collection of staple guns for all range of house and garden projects, whereas her use of mushroom soup was decidedly less frequent and duct tape appeared on her show with far less frequency than her mother or a glue gun.

Being one of those people who was not granted a talent for power tools or craft projects, necessity became my mother of invention and the staple gun my weapon of first resort.

For many Canadians, using a staple gun is an annual event, hauled out to tack colorful Christmas lights to eaves, then stored back in its place for another 364 days. Because of this association with Christian tradition, many Jews may not even own a staple gun. This is a pity, because Jews, like other Canadians, should be using their staple guns year-round.

My own experience with the staple gun began late in life. I took it up with a vengeance only after purchasing a new home and finding numerous tasks to be beyond my capabilities. But I would learn home improvement from the same place I learned to cook: weekend television. I remember the moment like it was only yesterday: Toronto TV handyman Peter Fallico, whose program Home To Go shows mobile people like students how to make their accommodations nice even if they'll only be there for a few months, created a decadent-looking headboard with nothing but a board, some fabric, a piece of foam rubber and, of course, a staple gun.

It was an epiphany for me, the time when I realized even incompetents can make nice things. I decided there and then that I, too, wanted a headboard of my own making.

I arrived at a fabric store for a bolt of cloth that matched the paint I'd help slop on the bedroom wall. Drove to Main Street for a sheet of one-inch foam rubber, then to the lumberyard for a sheet of plywood.

Lacking confidence when it came time to build though, I invited a handy friend and, even though he collects power tools like some people collect stamps, we stayed within my low-tech parameters. We stretched the foam over the plywood, stapled it, then covered it with the fabric, stapling it and turning it over to find, as the Spirograph ads of the 1960s used to promise, that my eyes couldn't believe what my hands had done.

Guests to my house were paraded through the bedroom to ogle the handiwork and make appropriately astonished noises. Within weeks, the staple gun was pressed into further service. I revisited the fabric shop to pick out some patterns that would be stapled to an old computer table to cover up years of dents and scrapes. A side table, under which reams of magazines and yet-to-be-read books had been messily stored, was tidied up with a stapled-on cover, creating a secret cache of reading material without the clutter.

The next few weeks were an orgy of stapling, inside and out – anything that wasn't tied up was stapled down. The duct tape lay lonely and unappreciated in the shed. The mushroom soup remained unbidden in its lonely can. But my sense of achievement soared every time I reached under my secret stash for a book or magazine, or when my tired hands touched the lush padded extravagance of the headboard.

A staple gun at Canadian tire: $19.99 to $39.99. A package of T-50 quarter-inch staples: $4.19. A sense of achievement from tacking together any two items you own: Priceless.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver journalist and commentator.

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