Nuts & bolts

My dad was one of those engineer types who liked to keep things in order. Me? Not so much. He used to have a cabinet of about a hundred oak parts drawers to hold what I would call "miscellaneous stuff" in the basement, that is now in my garage. Of course to him they were full of parts and other useful hardware like nuts & bolts. When he wanted to be left alone, but felt I needed something orderly to do, I would be sent to the basement to sort "stuff" like nuts & bolts by size. I would carefully slide each one into a machinist's gauge and those above a certain size would go into the "large nuts & bolts" drawer and those below into the "small nuts & bolts" drawer. Once I got them all sorted, I thought I was finished, but no, next he wanted me to match the nuts & bolts to keep together in the drawer.

The other day, I dumped the large nuts and bolts drawer onto a table. Somehow many of the nuts and bolts had separated. They were spread out across the vast white expanse like old friends that haven't seen each other in a while. Over time, they just lost touch with each other.

Now that he's gone, there's a part of me that wants to get out the gauge, sort the nuts & bolts and put them back together again, but not so much. I'd rather photograph the disorder for my own posterity and leave the sorting to the next generation.