We must respect the growing things that give us pleasure if we are to learn to handle them properly, to prune in the right place, foster in the right place, train in the right place. The craftsman knows this. He knows that ignorance and impatience spell destruction, that in handling the living wood he needs to know its qualities and how to turn them to the best account, how to use his tools skillfully so that shapeliness will follow, and that an outburst of impatience will only land him into difficulties and possibly ruin the job.
So many men to-day, doing work that is far removed from the making of things, the many professional workers, office workers, salesmen, factory workers – whose work may seem to be making but whose sole contribution is constant repetitive action in one infinitesimal part – lack contact with that real world in which a man can exercise his creative gifts.
They barely realise that such a world exists.
Theirs is the world of hard bargaining, of nimble wits or the routine job, which leave a great part of their natural human instincts unsatisfied, even though in all probability they do not know the reason for their perennial feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration.
When I was teaching in Germany this summer, there was more than just a simple language barrier.
There was, for lack of a better word, a redneck barrier. The crimson curtain, if you will.
You see, despite the fact that I wear shoes and have a house with indoor plumbing, I am by all accounts, a Southern redneck. And all rednecks like four things: fireworks, fairs, fighting and fire. So when we have a question or problem in the woodshop, I’m always the first to suggest we fire up the propane torch to test the hypothesis.
So it’s the last day of my class at Dick GmbH in Metten, Germany, this summer. The two cabinetmakers who work for the school have been impossibly patient with me and my crazy requests. They have driven all over Bavaria to look for the nails, hinges and tools that I want to use in the class.
But on Friday I came back and asked for a torch. The German cabinetmakers just looked at me blankly. So I mimed the word “fire” (don’t ask how) and then they both reacted with extreme surprise and alarm (in other words, they slightly raised one eyebrow each).
Why did I want a torch? To char the hinges for the project the class was making. The hinges were too new and shiny to be used on this project.
After some negotiation, the German cabinetmakers produced a fine propane stove that they used to heat vats of water for steam-bending. We fired up the stove and began charring the hinges. I held one with pliers (rejecting the safer three-prong pincer offered by the Germans).
One of the students was watching my progress and said: “This isn’t very German.”
“Huh?” I replied. “Why”
“It’s a weird experiment, this.”
So the hinge was cherry hot and turning all sorts of funky colors. I threw it to the ground, stood up and began to unzip my fly.
“Now we quench it.”
There was a commotion behind me. Urinating on hardware was probably not a good idea in the Fatherland. So I picked up the hinge with the pliers and pitched it into a nearby puddle.
New values have come in, new prospects of easy money are for ever enticing young men still further away, but it is doubtful they are happier for all that, for one can have easy money and an empty life, which is a poor substitute for creation. The wise ones will provide for it in their leisure and wood seems the natural medium for most of us. It is kind stuff to handle, it is creative work which keeps us close to first essentials by helping to provide necessities for the home, and it gives scope for every bit of skill and judgment we can develop, with always the promise of beauty in the end.
