I like to joke that my budget stretches to one unpaid mechanic who’s not very good, but that’s the truth. I do most of my own maintenance and repair work on my older cars, and I’ve pretty much learned by doing since I was in high school — armed with a Chilton’s manual and the right tool, there’s no job I wouldn’t undertake. (Whether I could successfully complete that job without calling a tow truck, an ambulance, or both is another matter.)
Sockets and ratchets are essential tools, and I’ve built up quite a collection since that first discount-store set I bought to replace the starter motor on my 1973 AMC Hornet Sportabout. It’s quite a motley assembly, representing an array of toolmakers, with sockets usually bought from whatever auto parts store was nearest — and still open — as I tried to finish a job.
There are five sockets here that are unlike all the others, and these are the ones that used to belong to my dad. I don’t really remember how they came to be with me, but I’ve had them for as far back as I can remember. It’s only recently, while cleaning and reorganizing the tool chest, that I’ve stopped to take a close look at them.
These sockets haven’t gotten much use, since they’re half-inch drive, and my ratchets, except for the torque wrench, are all three-eighths. After cleaning them off, I was surprised to see that they didn’t share a brand name, although their designs are pretty much the same. Three are marked “Indestro Super,” and the other two are “Wards Master Quality,” no apostrophe. I wondered: Does “Wards” mean Montgomery Ward? And could Wards and Indestro be related?
I found my answers through a website called Alloy Artifacts (alloy-artifacts.org). Master Quality, I learned, was the unregistered brand Montgomery Ward used for its top-quality hand tools, although it never trademarked the name. And Indestro did, in fact, manufacture tools for the department-store chain.
Indestro was a sort of slangy shorthand for “indestructible,” a name chosen for the company’s first product, a bottle-capping device. In the 1920s, Indestro branched out into automotive tools, but found itself stretched thin when the Great Depression hit. It became a subsidiary of the Duro Metal Products Co. of Chicago, known for its modern power tools and machinery. Duro sold a lot of products through Sears and Montgomery Ward — including the sockets my dad had bought. (If you’re curious, you can read more about Duro-Indestro at the Made in Chicago Museum, madeinchicagomuseum.com.)
Now my question is, when did my dad get these? Duro and Indestro linked up in 1933, so they were no older than that. Duro folded in 1990, three years after my dad died. My hunch is that he acquired them in the early 1960s, when I was a little kid, but that’s only a hunch. I think it might even be possible that he got them while he was serving as a pilot in the Air Force during World War II — Indestro was a wartime supplier of tools to the U.S. government. Or could he have bought them at a PX after the war?
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