Kathleen Clary Miller has written 300+ columns and stories for periodicals both local and national, and has authored three books (www.amazon.com/author/millerkathleenclary). She lives in the woods of the Ninemile Valley, thirty miles west of Missoula.
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My mother had to move her car permanently out of the garage. The doctor down the street often stitched my father’s fingers back together on the kitchen table. I grew up thinking my father lived in our garage because whenever he was not at the office, I found him there, sanding,varnishing, or hammering in his makeshift shop. His dream (shared by every man I’ve ever met) was always to have his own structure in which to produce the workings of his own hands.
There wasn’t enough land where we lived in Pasadena, California, but after my mother died and my father and I moved in together on an acre, the addition he built was his and his alone. Make no mistake about it, his woodshop was a sacred place. Bill Clary, at 87, ate his cereal at 7:30, headed down the back stairs, out the back door, and across the stepping stones to his shop for another day of work, pausing for a sandwich at exactly noon (“stomach time”), and ending at 5 p.m sharp for a noggin or two of Pusser’s Rum. He was the consummate carpenter, the master craftsman of the furniture he designs. For over fifty years, he made every bed, dresser, table and chair in the two places we called home.
Beginning with a stool he built for his own father at age seven, he afterword created astonishing works of art ranging from aircraft-plywood rocking chairs to zebra-wood jewelry boxes laced with ebony. No one in our family knew the retail price of a single piece of furniture. “I’m looking for a project,” he’d announce, and the phone lines would start vibrating and letters poured in from nieces, nephews, and grandchildren across the country. They’d send him pictures from which he rendered his own designs, drew precise measurements with by that time slightly shaking fingers. And although the etchings on paper may have been a bit wavier that they’d used to be, the end product — an angiko coffee table dressed with a mixed-wood mosaic inlay, for example — was perfect, seamless, balanced by an arch constructed from layers of veneer, the joinery virtually invisible to the naked eye.
Just as the aroma of barbecuing steak turns heads on a summer evening, the scent of sawdust from my father’s shop was the call of the wild. In 1996, when we moved to San Juan Capistrano, a neighbor, upon observing the contents of the moving van in the driveway, wandered across the street on the ruse of an introduction. “What incredibly beautiful furniture!” he said as his eyes passed from a polished round occasional table, to the inlaid grandfather clock, to the Texas sofas. When my father acknowledged that there was no room for all of it in our new house, the neighbor didn’t miss a beat. “What would you charge for that table? And may I come over and see your shop?”
What is it about the grind of the saw and the aroma of sawdust that arouses grown men from their sofas for a sudden dog walk? They would drift past our driveway, noses in the air, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the handicraft they could sense was being sculpted by a master. We already know about men’s insatiable urge to acquire tools; ever since early man first fashioned a stone to pound with, his progeny have kept pace by inventing a better belt or box to keep them in. But an entire building dedicated to those treasures was enough to lure total strangers to my father’s cave. An elderly gentleman wandered by to inquire about repairing a broken chair in his living room and ended up staying out there until dinner. The young doctor next door brought over a box he was making, and the next thing I knew another apprentice was in the shop, abandoning his wife and children every moment of his free time.
If they wanted to talk to him, they now telephoned the shop. Yes, guys, it even had its own phone number. Once inside the sanctuary, row upon row of drawers compartmentalized the enviable inventory. The eye candy of shiny brass fittings engaged the unsuspecting visitor, but it was the idea of having it all in a dedicated space that left them salivating. Plus, by nature, it was always messy. There was no nagging allowed in there, no tidying regulations. Wood shavings and scraps littered the cement floor, and the windows were smudged; one even remained broken from a flying piece of ply that jettisoned through the shop and across the back yard one spring.
People who turned down our driveway often didn’t turn away for hours. Whenever I cracked the front door for the UPS deliveryman, his eyes widened with wonder at the eclectic mix of warm woods in the entryway and living room. Like having been granted free admission to the museum of fine art, he stepped into a fantasy world of carpentry and saw not only the product of an artist, but the history of a family and the man who had always been there to fix whatever was broken. The deliveryman was impressed with the furniture, yes, but what he was really itching to do was go out back and see the shop that Bill built.
The man I am now married to first began enticing me with all the reasons I should meet him for a glass of wine. But when Brad learned that my father lived with me and had his own wood shop, he flat-out told me to forget the wine; he really wanted to get to know my father. And soon after he proposed, Bill went over to Brad’s garage to check out the groom’s tool dowry — a stunning collection from Bridge City Tool Works, and a brand new Skil saw with no place to put it. A marriage made in heaven, and I believe a wedding that would have been shot-gunned to the altar had I hesitated for an instant.
There was no reluctance on my part; I knew a good woodworker when I saw one. I wisely installed carpet the color of sawdust, carried sandwiches and drinks out to my husband, my father, and the ever-increasing neighborhood entourage, and every weekend I had the entire house to myself.
My father is gone now. Brad and I built a log home in Montana on property he’d owned for decades, dreaming of the day he could retire there—and have his own woodshop. When visitors arrive, forget the house tour. The only thing the man really wants to see is out back of the garage where he now collects tools and is creating cradles for our first two grandchildren.
“I’m in the man cave,” Brad announces with his last bite of bacon.
“Call me when dinner is ready.” Some women would complain, but this is how I was raised. Familiar territory; all is right with my world. It is a woman whose home is her castle; man would give his kingdom for a shop.