Southern folks don’t need proper nouns. We have whatchamacallits and thingamajigs.

My grandfather had the only blacksmith shop in Ashdown, Arkansas. That’s where I learned the important terminology.

Papa’s shop, didn’t have labeled drawers. There were coffee cans. Each one held something useful, Bolts of every length, nuts that didn’t quite match anything, washers that had seen better days, and little pieces of metal whose original purpose had been forgotten somewhere around the Eisenhower Administration.

“Hand me that piece right there,” Papa would ...