booandbunny

He worked in a wood carving booth at the Chicago World’s Fair, creating portraits with inlaid wood. There was a self portrait that hung in his house; a tiger on the hunt; some ships I think. He spun candlesticks on a lathe and created hundreds of pieces I’ve never seen, each one loved by the family member who received it.

He was a musician early on, playing drums in a band during his college days and maybe a bit after that. A college fella in the 1920s, he had privileges that many around him did not.

He was an engineer who designed machinery for the food industry. I remember the smell of his home office and the amazing tools he used to create machines on paper until he was almost 80 years old. What would he think of the 21^st century?

He was a man who did what he had to do, quiet but for a sharp, dry wit. I don’t know anybody who ever really heard him complain. How many men could spend the first 30 years of married life under the same roof as their mother-in-law? A nightly cigarette on the porch, my dad says. After dinner Grandpa would step out for a smoke.

And he had his workshop. A place to retreat and use the science that paid his bills to create the art that fed his soul. It wasn’t just a place where new things were made. It was also a place where old items found new life, like this table. It was the base drum to his set when he played as a college kid. When I remember this table, exactly as it sat between two stereotypical La-Z-Boy chairs, I am reminded of the reasons I appreciate it so much and the reasons I never knew its true beauty before I brought it home last year.

It weighs nothing now, but the gingerjar lamp and the sliding piles of National Geographic, Woman’s Day, Redbook and newspaper TV listings kept it firmly planted in that dreadful 1960s carpeting for almost half a century. It never wobbled or warped. It stood firmly at the center, quietly doing what it had to do … just like Grandpa. And when Grandma told me the year before she died that she wanted the table to be mine someday, it was my honor and privilege to guard this treasure.

Readying the house for the holidays, a time that always transports me back to that little ranch home of theirs in rural Illinois, I pulled back the protective coverings and gave the wood a little drink … a little Liquid Gold love.

“Grandpa, I’d really like to learn something about woodworking. I know you can’t really teach me now, but where should I start?”

“Get yourself a piece of wood.”

Gee, I wonder if my smart-assedness is genetically embedded somewhere. A smirk and a shake of the shoulder as I think this. Then I remember him at the dining room table. I’m not sure I ever heard him belly laugh, but a quiver of the lip and a shoulder shake often followed his own remarks. The lemony smell sets into my brain and I again fall in love with the care put into this table top, the time put into the matching of the grain, only to have it hidden all those years by countless periodicals.

My mind wanders in the circular motion of polishing. I wonder why so few of us actually make things anymore. I wonder about families and how very far apart so many seem to be these days, including our own since he and Grandma died. I wonder about waste, consumption, the value of something we know we can just replace if it wears out or gets ruined. I wonder what, if anything else in my house, is built to last the way this table has lasted. The Christmas tree lights click on. His smirk crosses my face again as I answer my own question:Memories.