He came back from the mainland with a toolbox on installments
At seventeen he went to the mainland to learn the trade. He came back with three things: a certificate, a toolbox bought on installments and no wish to share a room with anyone. The houses over there stand on piles, and the pile that is plumb today may not be plumb tomorrow, so the work never quite ends: it gets spread out across weeks. A backpack is what you pick up when the day's job is in somebody else's house. There is more of him in his biography.







