“Corruption of Youth”

A recent howl from Michigan by friend John Wolf. It speaks for itself: 

Hi Rick,

    I realized 3 weeks ago that my nephew’s 7th birthday is the end of this month.  I also drew a complete blank on what to send him.  Luckily, my brother left me a message a couple of days later saying that he had finished refurbishing the ground floor apartment in their house (hurricane Katrina was not kind to it) and Louie had been his helper.  I thought, “That boy needs a saw! and probably a drill!  And something to keep them in!”.  So I rummaged through my surplus tool supplies, and found a small crosscut saw that had been sharpened away considerably, and cut it down to about 14″ (shaped to the London pattern, which I like for no particular reason).  I made a small handle of cherry for it, and it turned out to be a pretty nice saw that could be of use to him even as an adult.  Then I cleaned up and repaired what turns out to be a pretty good egg beater drill, and a brace from a long ago boys toolbox, small but useable.  I provided a good selection of bits for both.  Found I had a block plane that was useable, but really made for a “toy” toolbox, and blunted the iron – he’s only 7, after all.  There are some other odds and ends too.

    I had some 1x8s that had knot free sections long enough to make a 10 x 22 x 8 chest, roughly 1/8 the size of my carpenter’s chest, then made a sliding till with drawers, on the theory that kids like to poke around in drawers.  I had hoped to mount the saw under the lid, but the till is just a hair too wide for that, so it mounts to the inside front and a square that belonged to Grandpa Wolf is on the lid.  I left appropriate notes with explanations and instructions inside, and packed it tight inside with Big Little Books that had belonged to my brother, which will leave the two of them to argue over their ownership.  Then I sent it off to New Orleans.

    A lot of the motivation was the pleasure of making it.  In a few years, that kind of gift will fall pretty flat, and I’ll fall back on gift cards.  But more important to me is the wish that he grow up with the feel of tools in his hands, and if it’s not the rich, powerful experience that I feel, it will at least feel normal and a matter of course.  I’d also like him to grow up with the thought in his head that people do and make things.  If he goes beyond that to try to add some grace and beauty to the world, so much the better.  It will be interesting to see what catches his fancy and who he becomes.

   Wish I could go to your riving and hurdle making class, that would be very interesting.

                                            John

We’d love to see a picture of Louie and the tool box, John.

And thanks for the segue…

BYPASS THE LUMBERYARD…

(just don’t tell Gurney’s and Copeland’s)

How about some green woodworking with Peter Follansbee this Columbus Day weekend?

Plymouth CRAFT has several openings left in a 2-day workshop all about riving green wood and learning the steps along the way to turn trees into hurdles-

Image from Coppice Co-op- http://www.coppicecoop.co.uk

Wood theory will lead to riving which will lead to hatchet and drawknife work and assembly of mortises and tenons. Registration includes 2 days of the best lunches you’ll ever eat made by the renowned Paula Marcoux as well as an expert tour of the Harlow Old Fort House (which happens to full of interesting original artifacts made using the techniques under study in this workshop).

Get thee to Plymouth CRAFT posthaste to secure your spot: www.plymouth.org

 

RIP Phil Woods

A story shared

I didn’t wake up this morning thinking, it’s a good day to get out a blog post. The weather’s sublime, the Bruins are playing a matinee, and I just spent the morning at Pret and Paula’s house picking up my copies of Cooking With Fire, Paula Marcoux’s amazing new book. 

When I opened my email and read the most recent howl from Michigan by friend John Wolf, however, I just had to share. John is ok with this, but my hope is that we may encourage him to tell his tales of life between Nagg’s Bridge and Duffield from his own virtual setting someday.

For now, thanks to John for the gift of a “story unused” and too good not to share.

Hi Rick,

     My main non – heyhowareya social contact for the last year and a half has been a weekly Sunday evening visit with an 85 year old friend of the family. He taught with my Dad, they lived near us and he was among the first people to greet my Mother and me when we came home from the hospital. His wife died 1 1/2 years ago and he asked me to visit him, which I did nearly weekly. He was always interested in building things, Taught history for nearly 50 years and was someone who, though he had a lot of interesting things to say, could listen too. He found the topics from Blue Oak and Joiner’s Notes interesting, and had a wealth of information about ship building, along with a house full of ship models, which he only recently quit building. Interesting topics always came up from nowhere: “Riding in a Sherman tank was a lot like riding in a cocktail shaker….” , “My Dad commanded the 8″ disappearing guns defending Portland”, “Oh, didn’t I tell you, Samuel Elliot Morrison was one of my history profs and my senior advisor.”. That sort of thing.

     He had been ill, so I hadn’t seen him for several weeks. I stopped last Sunday and found him home. He told me that the cancer he had been treated for twice already had come back and that there was nothing to be done. He had a hospice nurse coming weekly, and was comfortable, and after a rough couple of years he was ready to go with no real regrets. The conversation went on from there, and at some point I brought up a former friend who became convinced that the world was about to collapse and the poor people would come out of the cities to take our food, so he moved to an island in the straits of Mackinaw and built a fortified camp. Mr. Graham said that it must be some kind of story or narrative that got caught in some peoples heads. Horrible things were about to happen, so get yours and make sure that no one can take it from you. He mentioned a former colleague who built a bomb shelter in his basement, stocked it with canned food and planned to defend it with a .45 even from friends. I knew the man slightly, he had a toupe that looked like a dead woodchuck. We both shook our heads, and moved on to other things.

     That night I was unable to get to sleep. I thought about bomb shelters and fortified islands, and thought of another story that tells us about how to survive in hard times, and for that matter in good times. I’m sure you know the story too, If you watched Captain Kangaroo, you heard him read it in a book called “Stone Soup”. A group of soldiers ride into a village where the villagers have hidden what food they have. The soldiers sigh, and declare they will have to eat stone soup again, “but it would be so much better with an onion, or a bit of cabbage, or carrot”… You know the story. I used to think it was about how the soldiers conned the villagers, but have come to think that it tells about how, with some encouragement, people can pool what little they have, and everyone can eat. I made a mental note to bring that up on my next Sunday visit, and eventually got to sleep.

     The next day, Mr. Graham’s daughter called to let me know that he had died quietly in his own bed during the night. He lived a long and happy life, during which he touched many people, and we will miss him.

     This left me with my story unused. You seem like a person who would find a bit of carrot, so I have told you.

                                        Yours, John

 

The Wolverine State

Here’s a recent letter from John Wolf, farrier, farmer, smith, barn-whisperer, Riven Word refugee, woodrick-wright, and friend. The setting is Michigan, “between Nagg’s Bridge and Duffield”. The season, winter. And though we’ve never met, I know that Stella is a sweetheart of a dog. 

 Hi Rick,

My firewood rick got looking pretty thin last week, the weather has been pretty severe. I had a lot of wood cut out in the woodlot, about 1/8 mile from where I needed it. I got the loader tractor to start, plowed away the 3′ drifts in the dooryard, and got Stella’s truck out. A Dodge weapons carrier will go through 20″ of snow if handled judiciously, but apparently draws the line at 20″ of snow with an icey crust halfway down, then ice on the bottom. We got 10 feet.

I went back to the tractor shed for the loader, the starter caught fire. Put that out, got the scoop shovel, got the truck out partway and stuck it again where I had to turn. Cleared all of the snow from around it, to find sheet ice underneath.

Got a shovelful of coal cinders for under the wheels, it came out so easily that I almost made the machine shed a drive – through.

The ritual for cold weather start for the little A Farmall resembles in some respects early Roman religious rites. Apparently I performed them successfully, the tractor gods smiled and the A started, I paddle wheeled out to the woods and back a couple of times, then retired to the barn to build a miniature logging sled. Over night the loose snow in the wheel ruts solidified enough that the A could pull itself and the sled with 2 day supply of firewood. We made enough trips to have plenty of wood for the next month. Once the road packed down enough that I didn’t need to steer with the brakes, Stella could ride with me. She made motor boat noises the whole way.

     I just threw the wood off in a heap.

                                              John