I can see him sitting at the kitchen table like it was yesterday – my dad with a pencil in his hand working at a piece of grid-lined graph paper. I was high school age, old enough that I realized that he was in the middle of something I had never before witnessed. I was breezin’ through the room toward the door.
What’cha doing? I wanted to know.
Well, he answered. He was designing a house. Drawing up a floor plan.
That surprised me. I glanced down at the perpendicular lines and assorted box-shapes. Huh. I was even more surprised. It sure looked like the floor plan of a house. I’d just finished 10th grade drafting, so – of course – I was an expert. On the other hand, there was no stretch of the imagination in which I could picture my dad as having association with any part of home construction. Even paperwork parts.
You see, I knew for a fact that he was a little bit “tool challenged.” I’d been in the garages of my friends, where their fathers had tool collections filled with exotic repair-paraphernalia.
Not my dad. He owned a pair of pliers. A hammer. One screwdriver of each type. He had acquired a telephone lineman’s leather belt-pouch with a wire-bender and needlenose pliars – a couple of specialty tools that have little-to-no use in the average home repair. That sparce collection was stored in a small metal box in a lower kitchen cabinet. Next to the little tin of sewing machine oil.
My dad was not a handyman.
(He did replace the light switch in the bathroom, a project of which he was so proud he actually called me in to look it over. It was crooked. I didn’t mention it. Hey. It worked, after all.)
My friends razzed me about being the son of a head-shrinker until I convinced them I had inherited certain mind-control powers that allowed this son of a psych-degree-practitioner to make them do embarrassing things in public against their will. (Okay, that last part isn’t exactly true, but they did eventually lighten up when their teasing failed to get a rise out of me. Hey. I couldn’t deny that my dad did that sort of thing. For a living.) The tools he worked with every day were those kept somewhere besides a toolbox. No skill-saws. No jackhammers, mitre-boxes, socket wrenches, hand awls, or die-punches. He worked an adjustable brain-wrench, I guess.
I asked him about the floor plan. Was he planning to build a new house?
No, he answered. It was just something he enjoyed doing. Designing plans.
At the time, I was thinking that – as a hobby – there was a spectrum of activities that might be more rewarding. I mean, even if he completed a single paint-by-number velvet Elvis (Google it), he could frame it and put it on the wall. (Not any wall in our house, I’m betting. Maybe his doctor’s office waiting room.) If he constructed little ships in bottles he could hire someone to build a mantle in our house on which to display them.
He could pretend to golf like a lot of other dads, and just drive around the course in a cart on Sunday afternoons.
No.
But, I guess building and construction in the DNA is to blame. Unfortunately, after the death of his grandfather (who built a trio of side-by-side homes in Parsons, Kansas that are still standing and looking fine) that particular part of the code pertaining to actual handiwork became a recessive gene. It still hasn’t reappeared – bless my great-grandfather’s pea-pickin’ heart.
Embarrassingly, I’ve just changed channel from the PBS show This Old House to the Do-it-Yourself (DIY) network’s Rehab Addict program. If there is such a thing as an Old Age crush, I have one on Nicole Curtis, the woman who buys derelict homes and restores them to as close as original condition as possible. Man. (Or, should I say, Woman.) She knows her stuff.
I’m not at the kitchen table drawing floor plans, but here I am watching home repair television. If anything – at least my father was producing something tangible. I’m no more actively involved in construction than a museum patron is an artist.
As a bookseller, I don’t see myself ripping up a linoleum floor to reveal a vintage hardwood underneath, just waiting for a sanding and a coat of varnish. Oh, I’ve got the tools to handle most projects – but it is a little like a stamp collector comparing himself to a postman.
There are those that do it. And those that admire the talent and job well done.
If I had only possessed the foresight to ask my dad for one of his sketched-out floor plans maybe one of my little granddaughters could build it one day. That construction-strand of the DNA is bound to reappear one of these generations.
Find a woodworking book when you Come Visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!
