Lump
Well-known member
When I was a young kid I had a small Craftsman tool box full of Cman tools, which I carried around in the trunk of my daily driver. My hot rod was hidden from my parents at an old neighbor-lady's house, so I couldn't rely on my Dad's tools at home (I wasn't allowed to have a V8, cause Dad knew I would be street racing it if I had one...he was right). So I had to keep my own tools with me wherever I went, in case I got a chance to go to the old lady's garage where I kept my hot rod. I couldn't leave them there...no door on that garage, and she was a little senile and had no idea who came and went through her yard.
One night the tools got stolen from my car, and to make a LONG story short, I drove around the neighborhood with a shotgun, showing it to all the kids in the area, and making it clear that I really was going to use it when I found whoever had my tools.
In a day or two, the local cops called me at home, saying they had my tools. The box had just "showed up" on the police station steps, with a note saying the box had been "found" out in the woods. 
The next day, when the cops brought them in a cruiser to the Goodyear store where I worked, they asked me to prove the tools were mine. I had engraved my uncommon last name on several sockets, with my "J" first initial. After finding several sockets with my last name and first initial, they finally found one with my first name and last initial, and decided that together this was proof enough that I really was the rightful owner. As they handed my tools over to me, a big friendly uniformed cop told me that engraved names and initials were not really very good evidence for reclaiming tools, and were just about useless for convicting anyone of theft in a court of law. HOWEVER, he had a tip for me: The best kind of engraving you could do for PROVING ownership in a court of law, he explained, was to engrave your social security number in some of the tools. That made it an open-and-shut case, he observed (the year: about 1973).
Can you imagine engraving your SSN on your tools TODAY?
I still have one or two old Craftsman sockets with my SSN in them. I keep them in my safe, for nostalgia alone. I dare not use them again! What if I lost them? 
My, the times they have changed.
One night the tools got stolen from my car, and to make a LONG story short, I drove around the neighborhood with a shotgun, showing it to all the kids in the area, and making it clear that I really was going to use it when I found whoever had my tools.
In a day or two, the local cops called me at home, saying they had my tools. The box had just "showed up" on the police station steps, with a note saying the box had been "found" out in the woods. The next day, when the cops brought them in a cruiser to the Goodyear store where I worked, they asked me to prove the tools were mine. I had engraved my uncommon last name on several sockets, with my "J" first initial. After finding several sockets with my last name and first initial, they finally found one with my first name and last initial, and decided that together this was proof enough that I really was the rightful owner. As they handed my tools over to me, a big friendly uniformed cop told me that engraved names and initials were not really very good evidence for reclaiming tools, and were just about useless for convicting anyone of theft in a court of law. HOWEVER, he had a tip for me: The best kind of engraving you could do for PROVING ownership in a court of law, he explained, was to engrave your social security number in some of the tools. That made it an open-and-shut case, he observed (the year: about 1973).
Can you imagine engraving your SSN on your tools TODAY?
I still have one or two old Craftsman sockets with my SSN in them. I keep them in my safe, for nostalgia alone. I dare not use them again! What if I lost them? My, the times they have changed.
.
...the ugly orange paint did less harm to my tools than nice, neat initials would have... 