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Tool and Die Michelle Valois My father was a mold maker. He spent his Ufe making molds. Molds for plastic toy airplane propeUers and child-safe medicine bottle caps. Molds for disposable picnic lunch plates. Molds for combs, bands, and barrettes . Molds for train, boat, and space ship model kits, and sometimes car model kits, too. Sometimes, my father brought the things he made home, and sometimes I could play with them. Sometimes, my father made the parts of greater designs, so he never knew what the whole would be. Most ofthe time, his shop got contracts from local plastics companies, but a few times his shop landed big government contracts, and then he might never know what he was making, only that he was making more money. My father was a mold maker, and my mother was his wife, and together they made six children, and when they made me, he said, they broke the mold. He said this and laughed. Sometimes he said this and did not laugh. Thanksgiving. 1973. Seated around the dining room table. My father carving. My mother teUing a story about a fair, an autumn craft fair in the western part of the state. Me remembering something else. A school. Brick and ivy. None of the buildings higher than three stories. And it sat Uke a fat Buddha on a hfll as we drove through the town, which could have been my town—there was aWoolworth's, a few churches, a common —until you ascended the hfll, and then it could not have been my town because of this school, which on that day blazed red and orange and yeUow, with older girls, coUege girls, in plaid skirts or plain skirts, sweaters or turdenecks , girls walking side by side, carrying big books, girls whispering. They walked slowly, as if they had no place to go, as if the walking was the place itself—the walking and the books and the trees and whatever they were whispering to each other. 88 Michelle Valois89 We drove past the school, up a shady hill, to a big field that cradled the craft fair in high grass.We parked the car and got out, stretched and admired what was left of the foliage on the hills beyond the field. Cider hot and cold; apples and pumpkins; woven shawls of deep purple and blood red, some wool, some a soft nubby material that was not cotton and not wool. Soft and regal, my mother said, stopping only briefly at each booth. She touched the material lightly and stepped back when the weaver or quilter came around to answer questions or offer a price. My father walked ahead to the woodworking section. I foUowed, touched the pine letter holders and poUshed birch spoons and bird's eye maple jewelry boxes, Uke touching warm ice, the wood oily and smooth. People stroUed along the rows ofbooths and tables. Mothers and daughters walked arm in arm. Fathers sported tweed blazers; mothers shouldered shawls Uke those from the weaver's booth. Easy-going chatter wove in and out of a folk singer's song coming from a small stage under a giant yawning elm. We did not buy anything. We drove back down the hiU when we had seen everything there was to see, back down the hfll and through the town that was not my town, back down the hfll and through the town, as I twisted in the back seat, strained to get a last look at the brick buildings and paths with whispering girls, paths that cut through the center ofthe coUege square, paths glowing in foliage and globed lamps. What was this place? They must have told me; my parents must have said where we were going, but it meant nothing . It was just a word. Dickinson CoUege, my mother said and added that Dickinson CoUege was where Lynda Bird Johnson went to school, at least she thought so. What was this place, this Dickinson CoUege, where girls walked together carrying big books, and everything for sale at the fair was new material, Uke nothing I had touched before?What was this place my mother recaUed for us while...

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