Nothing quite triggers the recall of a memory more than a smell from childhood. The short story "The Inheritance of Tools" by Scott Sanders details a young boy's memories of being in his father's garage and creating towns with the sawdust garnered from his father's woodworking. The description of his father being a "colossus" lets us realize just how young this boy is. Sanders creates a vignette that shows through the use of precise diction, imagery, and figurative language a positive memory of a young boy playing alongside his father.
First, Sanders's utilization of simple diction quickly establishes that this is a story that is going to pull on the reader's emotional connection to childhood. The phrase, "No matter how weathered and gray the board, no matter how warped and cracked, inside there was this smell waiting, as of something freshly baked" connects the reader to a memory the boy has through smell. The use of basic words quickly allows you to visualize the scene inside the garage, and then the comparison of the woods sawdust to something "freshly baked" helps drive home the message that this is a memory of a boy recalling positive memories.
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We are informed how valuable this sawdust is to the young boy by the way that he treasures it: "I gathered every smidgen of sawdust and stored it away in coffee cans". Sanders shows not only is playing with the sawdust important the actual substance sawdust is important as he keeps every "smidgen". The inference is that it is important because it is his father's sawdust and that is why these memories are so