The wife and I do enjoy our weekly drives around the local countryside on our never ending hunt for antiquities and treasures at local garage and estate sales . We’ll gleefully travel near or far on the hope or chance of finding something of interest …. meaning high resale value .
Apart from the vehicle there is another tool I’ve come to rely on in our endeavors more and more as time goes on . A magnifying glass became necessary in order to seek those makers marks hidden beneath the age and grime of old tools and as of late I’ve been forced to graduate to a more powerful jewelers loupe to read even clear and unhidden marks .
I just discovered that an item I recently purchased wasn’t marked Sheffield as I thought when I acquired it but instead was marked Shelley and I thought crap … I gotta get a new prescription . Now along those lines I renewed my drivers licence last week and it required a vision test and on a whim I asked if I could try it without my glasses first .
” You did great , you passed ” said the tester and promptly issued my licence with out the “corrective lens needed” printed on the bottom and I might confess this alarmed me a little as it got me thinking there must be an awful lot of people on the roads around here with some chronically impaired vision .
I started to wonder about all those people who don’t drive off when the light turns green and the possibility that they simply don’t see it . Or are busy petting their seeing eye dogs . I know the next time I’m stopped for an infraction I’ll likely need my magnifying glass to view the cops badge and there’s nothing he can say . Under the necessary magnification of my magnifying glass I can find no requirement on my drivers licence that I wear glasses to operate a motor vehicle .
Oh… the one dollar Shelley tool turned out to be a part of a tool kit from a 1940’s MG and worth fifty bucks ….. even a blind pig finds an acorn now and again
