Lie Nielsen advertises their woodworking tools as “heirloom quality.” Heirlooms have a je ne sais quoi, they have a desireability and timelessness and an immortality to them that’s hard to turn away from, hard not to pine after. We want everything that we do to be heirloom quality, we want our mmeories to be heirlooms, our cabinets, our chests of drawers, our spoons. Maybe that’s just me. But I don’t think so.

The oldest heirloom in my posessions is my great granduncle’s watch. He bought it when he came to America. It represents the success of his endeavor to start a new life across the ocean and away from his home. It worked out pretty good, good enough for a gold pocket watch. Is a gold pocket watch worth not being able to drink red wine all day, tan as hell, while you catcall everything with two legs? Maybe.

That pocketwatch is a nice memory to have, a fine thing to think about, but it’s far from useful, mostly it lives in a box and I reflect on it sometimes, and those times are meaningful to me. they improve my life. I wouldn’t sell it, but it doesn’t make itself enormously useful on the day to day. I have another heirloom, my grandfather-in-law’s flat head screwdrivers. I don’t use them all that often, but there’s something different about an heirloom that you can make use of, that eases your path down whatever trip you’re taking. 

Could you have both?

I wondered today, could you make a homestead into an heirloom? Not just something that people inherit and liquify so they can improve whatever house they live in two states away, but an heirloom they treasure and can’t be rid of for the beauty of the thing. Could a person build a home, and establish a financial trust such that a homestead, a tool for living well, could be accepted and passed on the way this watch is?

Nobody saw that watch and pawned it so they could buy a synthesizer or a jacket or tickets to a show. It was kept and treasured. Same with those screw drivers.

I see no reason that it might be impossible. Difficult? Sure. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. But if the goal of my great grand-uncle in buying that watch was to declare his success and to make it possible for all of his progeny to tell time with style and grace, could it possible for someone now to build a place to declare their success and to make it possible for their progeny to raise childen and live well?

Yes.
Is is possible.
More than possible, it is necessary.