1st chapter rewrite of an old story, "Workshop Wings"

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.”