Workshop Wings
Favorite
smells in the world: pipe tobacco, cut fresh
grass, and new spun sawdust. The perfume of my father’s father, strong and
captivating, that's my GranGrandPa. Smell
any one of them, and I’m ripped in an instant from surroundings and pulled
home.
All kinds
of things, he taught me well. Everything
I wanna serenade, soul serenade, and call out down from mountains and the
bottoms of the earth and everything between that I must, for him, for his memory, and his life, shout out and recognize, give
credit where credit’s due.
Everything I’ve first met and later felt important. It was only after school that life became real, bike to
the house, tear into the grass, and sprint to the workshop in the backyard.
Granpap
was a carpenter - retired. He retired
from a recurring income, but never stopped building things. I never knew him not to have a
project. He built what was needed
or asked for: bookshelves, tables, rocking chairs, just about anything.
Finished projects were solid, exact, and of high quality. Still I find every piece slick as
anything in any store.
I get
around my brother for about two or three minutes, and the way he talks to me,
they way Andy talks to everyone, it’s like Pappy’s greeting me at the the front
door. They both got it, that mojo
other people everyman ease with sincere words. The man could talk; He loved to talk to people to know them, never just to fill empty space. If he were alive, I wouldn’t be
surprised if horses licked him. He
was salt of the earth. Family,
friends, strangers, everyone was welcome in his dusty backyard home away from
home. A constant foot traffic warmed the creative space between the back wall and the rickety wooden foldable
garage doors. People came to the workshop the way stomachs come to lunch,
eventually and with great satisfaction. The whole town was bound to swing
through sooner or later. They came to stretch, relax, crack a can of Blatz,
hang out, and talk all day of the mundane and the uncanny. Conversation in the woodwork
shop spilled easier than sawdust and slight flakes from the table-top blade.
In my
world, the world he spun, GrandPap was the talk of the town. Go to the A&P and
every person had to have a minute. What’s Paul up to? How’s he doing? He
gearing on anything?
Before he
retired from carpentry he retired from the Seabees. An old mug that long ago traded coffee for yellow
measuring pencils was the only hint of a former Seabee life. I knew they were military, Navy, and they built things in the shit, smack in the middle of wars.
That and that they had a really cool name. My imaginings all came from the faded
cartoon bee with the big muscles on the side of the mug. I never asked about the
Seabees. I knew he didn’t want to talk about Seabees or Wars. I don’t think he was trying to shelter
me or anything, I think he just hoped that the madness never broke out around
me, or at least that unchecked hand-me-down aggression was never again sold as righteous
patriotism from sea to sea, door to door. Once in
the middle of Alex Trebeck’s Jeopardy, might have been seven or eight, out of
nowhere he said, “no glamour, building things for wars.”
After
school, just about everyday, I cut a beeline straight to his house. That backyard was a place of wonder.
The basement opened to a wide patio.
The shop was a gentleman’s distance off to the right. A stone path led to a rectangle garden
about three-quarters the size of a football field; in the mornings we worked
the garden. He worked a little more than me. I always went back
first to get on food for the rest of the day, sometimes I had deep crimson tomato,
dirt fingernails before the sun even began pushing a slight yellow orange red.
The
backyard was gigantic and stretched out the way a summer lasted back when the
best part of summer was a ice cream truck with chocolate eclairs driving, maybe
more of a bramble, strolling past the neighborhood swimming pool. There were two ways through the
backyard. One was a big green tractor. I rode on the big seat with him when we
cut the grass. That tractor, to me was a monster truck. Big noise. Big tires.
Big fun. The green monster was big, bad, and powerful. Up to the forest, it
could go anywhere eyes could see. I know he got a kick of the fun we had riding
“Bob.” Course, if we weren’t beatin’ back enormous wild wide opens we could always cut
through it on foot. Everyday
included a walk, and every walk was an adventure, and you can’t have an
adventure without a dog or three. Sawyer,
Utes, and Abby. Deep in the woods, but really any everywhere dogs are a must.
Even if you’re heading to the creek to fish. Yep, there gonna jump in the water, splash around, play, cool
off, and scare away all the fish. “Chris,
it’s better to have them with us in case we lose track of the sun on the way
home,” he said, “lost in the woods can really crack a man open in ways that he
can never heal.”
Afternoons
were devoted to wood work projects in the shop and playing gear head on an old
beater. The last car we built was
a bright orange Gremlin. The cars he found, who knows how he came star
crossed to these steel combustion engines, were as pathetic and homely as the pleading
eye dogs that every now and then followed him home. One of the best things I
learned from him is that where you start has nothing to do with where you
finish, its all about persistence and hope. As with the wood projects, come a couple weeks the dogs, the
cars began to come together, look healthy, grow color and luster, gain energy,
and hold a soft flicker of life. What I now recognize everywhere, a subtle flicker, what John
Lennon said goes on within and without you. Whether car or dog, next
thing you know they stood on their own power and prowess…purr and prowl…rev and
run…in no time they were ready to go at the door in the morning.
Looking
back, I see true magic is the energy of life, however it is applied from one
thing to another - hand to machine, hand to dog, or hand to man. At the time it
was natural ordinary hard work and care with an open ear and eye for a fix to a
problem. There was always more going
on that only now I’m still starting to understand. In the evenings he smoked a
pipe. I played with a box of wooden blocks he made for me before I was born, my
first birthday present. I played king maker to elaborate castles. GranPap read, drew sketches, and
conceived of highly practical, useful designs. Sometimes though he just got deaf to my GrandMa on the bottom two
shelves of Milwaukee's Blatz in the workshop refrigerator , which as long as I ever knew was consistently taxed, never supplied, and always from top to bottom
completely full. Two different
size men tinkering around the house way, way before I ever realized I was
already in the artist game and trade. He really knew everything.
He knew things and would look me
direct in the eye. We talked of things no one else ever gave notice to in
private or public. He never asked
for my word or silence, but I knew our speech was secret, just for our ears.
It’s
amazing what he knew of life; all kinds of life beyond the everyday and ordinary.
He knew about animals too: where and how they lived, what they did during the
day, what they did at night, and how they communicated to each other.
One day
walking in the woods, with the dogs, he told me something bizarre and incredible.
He said, “You know, I told you animals communicate and talk to each other? You
know that you can talk to animals just like I’m talking to you right now.”
