By Jim Hagarty
One day, the children of a star hockey player will sit around wondering what to do with all of their father’s trophies and medals, now that he’s gone.
The same sort of predicament is apt to befall the offspring of a man who spent a good part of his free time fashioning things out of wood. My father-in-law was such a man, and when he died a few years ago, so enormous was the collection of wooden things he left behind that his four children came near to distraction trying to decide what to do with them all.
To detail a partial list of the items Alex carved, whittled, turned, glued, stained and varnished, there were beds, lamps, coat racks, speaker boxes, microwave tables, coffee tables, endtables, recipe boxes and picture frames in numerous enough quantities to outfit an art gallery. There were turntable devices for holding seasonings and condiments on dining room tables. Other ingenious contraptions, using the same mechanism, served to hold board games and allowed the users to simply rotate the games in their direction, rather than craning their necks into impossible positions. We called these turntables “lazy susans”.
My father-in-law left behind so many hand-carved clocks it was a wonder he could have been so productive without the benefit of several workers toiling three shifts a day in a factory in his back yard. He made wooden letter openers, with decorative handles, egg cups, salad bowls, and Christmas decorations. He turned out tiny wooden pickle forks, jewellery boxes, tapedeck cases and special cabinets to house old record turntables. Along with one huge and incredibly detailed doll house for his granddaughters.
This industrious man also crafted stereo stands, shelves aplenty and bookcases so numerous he could have opened his own small library. There seemed to be no human need that he couldn’t fill with something turned out on his lathe in the basement. He left behind at least one stand-up paper towel holder, a low-to-the-floor rack for putting shoes on and footstools of various designs and colours.
And unless my memory fails me, we have not yet even rounded third base. Candle holders came off the assembly line at Alexander’s Fabricating Inc. in such numbers a cathedral could have been easily outfitted. There were salt and pepper shakers, spice racks and framed “puzzle boards” to contain all the pieces being assembled by his four puzzle-crazed kids. There were record and tape cases and even a small wooden box painted blue to hold a boy’s toy cars. And though that boy is now almost fifty, it is still doing its job and is brought out even today when my kids visit the craftsman’s former home.
As lengthy as it is, the foregoing list pales to insignificance when stacked up against the dozens of tiny figurines Alex carefully whittled out of various woods. His specialty was flowers and his output so prodigious I imagine there was not a home within twenty miles of his that did not, at some point, have one of his pieces displayed somewhere.
A man of the cloth and a woodworker, my father-in-law loved God and wood and I’m not sure in what order he rated them, though I am certain he was forever grateful to the former for having created the latter. It was not unusual, in his later years, to find him, pipe in mouth, at his kitchen table, whittling tools in hand and wood shavings covering table, lap, chair, floor, and lazy black cat sleeping at his feet, as classical music played softly on his stereo which sat, appropriately enough, on one of his many stands.
In those autumn years, with the duties of minister behind him, he spent many weekends at woodshows and craft fairs and was a regular customer at the local, historic sawmill near his home which never let him leave without a couple of leftover pieces of rare and fine wood tucked under his arm. In his retirement, he was an easy man to buy gifts for: a large slab of cherry wood or pine, all wrapped up and festooned with a bow, did the trick every time. The downside of that generosity, however, often showed up a few months later in the form of a few more household items the giver hadn’t known she needed.
One day, near the end of his life, my father-in-law, more father to me now than in-law, left his home for good and took up residence in a veteran’s hospital in a nearby city. Over the next two years, as his health steadily failed, he played cards with the other old veterans, watched ball games on TV and waited for the end.
And, oh yes, he wandered down to the woodshop and turned out beautiful wooden train sets for his grandchildren. I think of him often, now, especially when I see my young kids pulling their varnished wooden choo-choo through the kitchen.
There is almost no part of our home and my office today that doesn’t hold something created by my father-in-law. Not one piece he made, I am sure, would win any awards, though all of it is more art than craft. On some days, with the bug of envy biting us, we think of these many items as mini albatrosses that prevent us from acquiring some really “fine” pieces. At other, more peace-filled times, we realize how, in such a grand way, our modest spaces have been outfitted, by two big hands that always strived for perfection and never once achieved it but which left us with a legacy of lumber and love in the process.
And which, alas, our children will someday sort through with some anxiety and say, “What are we going to do with all this old stuff?”
My guess is, the answer will come to them, as it has gradually come to us. We cherish it and its maker.
And move on.
