Every tool in your grandpa’s garage has a story. Ask about them before they turn into just tools.

Objects hold their meaning in a person rather than in themselves. The plane on the shelf is a story about a job, a house, a year somebody was broke, and all of it lives in one head. The day that head is gone it becomes a plane on a shelf, and somebody sells it for four dollars. Nothing about the object changed; the entire loss was in the telling.

Go out there and ask about three of them. Where it came from, what he made with it, what went wrong the first time. Record the audio if he lets you, and keep it even if you never play it back.