Silicon Valley Windmills in Jeopardy as Quixote Rides Again!
Well, I did it.
I finally found a lumberyard that doesn't distribute anal lubricant at the door and I bought a pile of wood.
With my family's background in woodworking, you'd think this would be a mundane event. My grandfather was a carpenter, not a hammer-swinging wood-butcher slapping together 2x4s, but a real, live shipwright. My grandfather was born and died within the 20th century, but his skills and his tools color his memory with previous eras.
My dad and his father had a complex relationship that I still don't understand. My grandfather died when I was only eight, so I don't think I ever really will. Whatever the case, my dad absorbed the craftman's heritage from my grandpa. That plus an uncanny talent, an "eye for shape" as he puts it, leave me extremely envious of my dad's abilities.
When a beautiful roadster pulls up to a red light across the intersection, I admire its sinuous sheetmetal, but otherwise, it's a cipher. I can only lamely guess its make and decade (early 1930s?), knowing that my dad would take a look and exclaim something like "There's a 1933 Ford three-window coupe! Woody Royce's dad had one of those… actually his was a sedan… and a '34… and his was black and not yellow like that one…"
When we walk into a gun shop, peering down the racks, I might be able to pick out a old sporterized Krag by its trapdoor magazine or a Winchester Model 88 by its modern lines and lever action. My dad can tell a Remington 700 from a Winchester Model 70 at a glance. To me, they're both modern bolt-action rifles. To him they are like Darth Vader and Yoda. He can just as easily pick out a pre-'64 Model 70 from a post-'64. He can tell an Argentine Mauser from a Mexican Mauser from a Swedish Mauser from a Turkish Mauser while they're still on the rack and across the room.
With that eye for shape and a craftsman's patience, my dad makes beautiful objects. Whether they're graphite portraits of Native Americans or color studies in oil or gunstocks in walnut.
During my family's attempt to make a living by crafting custom gunstocks, I grew up to the smell of walnut shavings and sound of woodworking machines. The entire family invested their sweat equity. I cleaned up around the shop and did odd jobs. My mom developed muscular forearms as she became an expert operator of our Don Allen duplicator. My dad created stocks according to his own aesthetic, an older discipline that scorned the exotic laminations, cavernous thumbholes, and ridiculous cheek rests that characterized the new and fashionable. He spent hours chasing groove after groove of checkering, all the lines parallel and not one flat diamond.
I suppose this is why I spend so much time tilting at windmills.
I have rebuilt my son's bedroom and one of our bedrooms. They are now beautiful and functional, exactly the sort of space we want inhabit.
Now standing in our garage are a table saw, a band saw, a drill press, a jointer, and a dust collector. As my wife demonstrated so well, all this machinery can be shifted aside and we still have room to park a car for maintenance. Of course, we now have a pile of wood in that space.
A practical part of me still doubts. Why do I work so hard to fit a woodworking shop in my suburban two-car garage? Why did I just spend $800+ on wood?
Another practical part of me responds with a list of the projects around the house (entryway desk, phone table, dining table, kitchen cabinets), my demand for craftsmanship, and lack of funds needed to pay someone else for the level of quality I want. I can't bring myself to pay slightly less for crap.
An emotional part of me evokes my grandfather's tools and my dad's skills. I feel compelled to rekindle that legacy and do it justice.
That's why I don my knight's armor of plastic safety glasses, earplugs, and respirator to make big pieces of wood into smaller ones.
Pakeha