St. Joseph, Mo. ? He’ll sharpen anything: saw bits, knives, scissors, lawn mower blades. Read the signs outside his house.

Perry Leroy Sechler’s a man of his word.

Just go around back, as the crooked sign tacked to his patched screen door says. Through the open black gate, down a cracked concrete walk, past a row of budding tomatoes and pickle-scented dill growing in the body of a headless plastic swan, you’ll find him.

Sechler, 80, sharpens, with a file or a grinder, whatever needs sharpening.

Out front again and into the crowded front room of his small home, though, there’s more — antiques, old hand tools, crosscut and bow cut saws, an old trumpet, shiny washboards, oil lanterns, kettles — the pile grows waist-high in the middle of the room.

“After I retired, I thought, well, I gotta do something,” Sechler said.

His rusted wares are old, yes, but if they told stories, they’d tell yarns like Sechler, who served in the Navy during World War II. Days in the South Pacific, the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa are his, and not from the pages of a history book.

“I guess I’m an antique, too,” he said.

Originally from four miles south of Troy, Kan., he has lived here and scavenged at auctions for about 25 years. Customers come, searching for old cream canisters, yellow and red fire hydrants, dinner bells and push plows, he said.

Perry Leroy Sechler walks across the street toward his home and business in St. Joseph, Mo. Sechler, 80, buys, sells and trades and sharpens just about anything his customers want.

“It comes and goes, you know, here all the time. Just something to do keeps you busy.”

Sechler started sharpening as a kid. “I practically sharpened all my life,” he said.

And he can’t see quitting any time soon, at least as long as he’s able.

“It’s really no hard work or nothing, you see. … It’s mostly sitting work.”

Bound for auctions or the grocery store, Sechler climbs onto his 1959 770 Oliver tractor or his 1958 520 John Deere.

The two alligator-nosed old beasts have platforms with buckets, baskets and crates, flashing lights and motorcycle windscreens.

The Oliver flies at 35 mph and the wheels skim Sechler’s shoulders.

It’s a different world, in many ways, but Sechler sees change through the farm, where the tools and contraptions he grew up with now litter his yard as antiques and curiosities.

They’re bound for life as yard decor and maybe to other antique stores, which is OK, he says — “that’s what keeps the wheels turnin’.”