That is when it officially began.
That is when I started work in a small job shop
in Independence Virginia.
I was 19.
Razor Ridge Workshop - Independence, VA
Nov. 1977
The Apprentice's Trail
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1977, August 1st.
That is when it officially began. That is when I started work in a small job shop in Independence Virginia. I was 19. |
Razor Ridge Workshop - Independence, VA
Nov. 1977 |
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But, if you were to track it out,
back to when it really began, one would wind up back to when I was a boy. Battleships, shields, and swords were what was in the wood, way back when, in a backyard on Briarcliff Place |
2701 Briarcliff Place - Charlotte, NC
Oct. 1964 |
The Garage
I would sit in the garage, on it's smooth concrete floor, bending nail after nail into some old piece of pine with a hammer, whose head looked like a mushroom, & cut out piecies of one thing or another with a set of handleless saw blades, whose handle was either lost or ignored. |
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It was a highschool sweetheart
who lulled me back into the wood during Christmas of 1976 with the wish of a rocking chair. On Christmas Eve, in that same garage of bent nails & handleless saw blades, I toiled away like an elf on a mission determined to deliver a chair on Christmas morning. |
Susan's Rocker - Christmas 1976
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An unwitting apprentice - Nov. 1962
I remember now the boy sitting on a cool concrete floor making a shield for the neighborhood acorn fights, and the young man working by the light of a dingy lamp or two on a cold December night. The young girl's wish brought me unwittingly to a higher level of woodworking that felt comfortable - familiar . . . |
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. . . and carried me
into an affair with sighting the wood that has long out lasted the affair with the girl who made the wish |
The Apprentice - Spring 1997
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