TOW #13 - "A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails"

This glorious essay by Donald Hall highlights the life of Washington Woodward, a distant cousin of the author as described by his grandfather. To summarize the essay, the author talks about how much of a fulfilled life Woodward lived, but how little significance it had to anyone else. He often mentions that New Hampshire (where Woodward lived most of his life alone) was dying and in a constant of decay and being forgotten, which suggests that Woodward's simple way of life was common in New Hampshire, but it has lost popularity throughout the years. Hall describes Woodward most often as a hardworking and skillful man. “The best thing about him [Washington Woodward] was his pride in good work...I knew him to shoe a horse, install plumbing, dig a well, make a gun, build a road, lay a dry stone wall, do the foundation and frame of a house, invent a new kind of trap for beavers, manufacture his own shotgun shells, grind knives and turn a baseball bat on a lathe.” His brilliance and self-sufficiency led many to think of him as a miser, but the author tossed that idea to the wind in an amazing way. He said that a miser would leave a hundred thousand dollars behind a mirror for his family when he died, but Woodward left behind a hundred thousand straightened nails because "it was a sin to allow good material to go to waste”. This also highlights that 'old New Hampshire way of life' mentioned earlier. While a life of simplicity like Washington Woodward's is personally fulfilling; he told his story in pride over and over again before he died, but no one who listened seemed to care. I think that part of the essay shows the turning point where preferring his way of life is starting to die with him, hence tying together the essay with a full-circle ending.