Let’s start off with me telling you a little something about myself. In 1982, I was 12 years old and beginning seventh grade at Tahoma Jr. High School here in western Washington (the state!). This was the Big Time; in seventh grade, you had 6 different classes with 6 different teachers and two of those classes were electives. I chose “Introduction to drafting” and “7th grade wood shop” as my two elective classes. Drafting because I liked to draw and wood shop… well, because it sounded cool and most of my friends were doing it. Plus, I hated sports and it made my dad happy to see me take (err… make that ‘fake’) an interest in something other than watching Starblazers or He-man cartoons. See, my dad was a carpenter and my lack of interest in everything that wasn’t science fiction always concerned him. So wood shop was win-win; I got to hang out with my friends and look at girls, and Dad was happy with the thought that he and I may actually have a common interest.
Drafting was easy but I sucked at woodworking… I still had one leg in childhood (wanting to go home and ride my BMX bike and play with Lego’s) and the other firmly planted in adolescence (staring at girls). I was geeky, fat, uncoordinated, starting to get pimples, and was way more interested in how my hair was feathered than actually making or building anything. Woodshop was really just a way to hang out with my friends during school.
The only things I produced during that entire first quarter in Wood Shop were a walnut and oak pencil holder and a letter opener out of fir. Yes, a letter opener out of fir! I wish I could say that walnut and oak were just too hard for my young hands to work with a rasp and that that is why I chose the softer fir for the letter opener, but honestly, I spent my shop fee on candy. The shop teacher, Mr. Dawson, was disgusted at my confession but gave me a chunk of an old fir 2×4 to keep working until I could pay him back with my lunch money. It took me all semester to pay him back!
Seventh grade, I thought, had filled my requisite quota of woodworking and I didn’t pick it up again until after I had graduated from High School.
After graduation, I went to work for my Dad as a laborer. All I did was move lumber from one end of the jobsite to another, carry it up countless flights of stairs and pull more nails than I care to admit. It was hard work and I hated it, but eventually he let me start to nail things together and use the circ saw. Building things was much cooler than just hauling materials around.
My first voluntary “woodworking” project was speaker boxes for my pickup. I had spent my entire paycheck on a set of Jensen 6×9 coaxial speakers and needed a place to mount them. A couple partial sheets of ACX and some indoor/outdoor carpet, and several boxes of sheet-rock screws and “EUREKA!” I had conceived, designed and constructed something with my own skills (lacking as they were). The boxes were way too big (I had to move my seat forward a couple of inches and the speakers still fired directly into the back of the seats) and made the speakers sound horrible, but they looked great. I was so proud that I made a set for by buddy’s truck. He used them for all of two days then built his own because they were so large he couldn’t fit behind the steering wheel.
So there you have it, I finally started to dig woodworking.
After that, my Dad and I would trade small power tools on holidays and birthdays. Usually sanders (we never had enough sanders!) or Makita cordless tools and spend the odd weekend either making small gifts for my mom and sisters or refinishing some piece of whatever my mom had found at an auction or antique store. It wasn’t great work, but I did learn a lot from my dad and always considered it to be somewhat of a hobby. Sadly, my Dad died in 1999 and it had been some time since we had done any sort of woodworking so anything I learned from him was quickly unlearned to make room for other things. It wasn’t until 2003 when my father-in-law, Bill, suggested that he and I make a cradle for my soon to be born son that I got back into it. That was the turning point for me. I had a new child and a reason to continue woodworking.
See, woodworking was (and still is) different this time around. It’s less about material wants, but more about self-worth and pride. It’s about teaching my children to work with their hands. It’s about problem solving. It’s about being part of a community and passing knowledge on. It’s about maturity and it’s about having a legacy, however small it may be.
When my parents died, they left a lifelong collection of things. Many of these things were valuable (both monetarily and sentimentally), but most of it was just “stuff”. Of those ‘things’, there is one item that reminds me of my parents love and serves as a metaphor for what woodworking means to me. It’s a small chair my dad made for me when I was three. It’s nothing special, just a plain chair assembled from four pieces of some hardwood with butt-joints and dowels that features two cowboy boots jig-sawn into the back. It’s my son’s chair now and more often than not, it’s a garage (or launching pad) for hot-wheels and Lego’s, or a step stool for my wife or daughter. Whatever its current line of duty, it will always be the chair my dad made for me and my most treasured possession.
Follow up to my last post.
Thank you for all of the emails and comments I received about my first post. I know, I know… enough with the smart-aleck remarks about our woodworking brothers & sisters. Really, I just wanted to make it clear that I think these people (among others I neglected to list) are the true superstars and celebrities of the digital woodworking world and I wanted to express my genuine appreciation and admiration, although it came out in a less than comical way.
I offer my sincere apologies if I offended anyone of them.
In regards to the Britney comment; no I don’t have the desire or required lack of underwear to make an ass of myself in front of paparazzi… I might if I had the opportunity, but that is beside the point. You’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
- Pete
11/18-2008:
Just an aside. By no means did I mean to imply that the chair my father made is more important than anything in my life. My wife, Kate, and our kids (Sam, Maeve, and Georgia) are. What I meant to say was that of all the things I have from my parents, this is the one that is most important to me.
… besides, my iPod is way more valuable.
