Woodworking Projects

As a freshman I took farm shop, algebra, English and general science. Farm shop was the first class of the day (home ec for the girls) and the class period was for one-and-a-half hours, as compared to one hour for my other classes, perhaps because there was never any outside studying to do. The name “farm shop” was sort of misnomer as the things we did and learned to do related only in part to farm activities. Now that I think of it I was exposed to shop instruction in the elementary grades.

The superintendent, Mr. Leistra, in addition to a few calisthenic activities, also gave the boys a few beginning lessons in woodworking. I can still picture him, a thin intent figure, with a gray sweatshirt instead of his normal suit coat, planing away on the flat surface of his sample piece of wood. Do one face first, then an edge, then an end, and repeat in reverse, ending up with the second face.

Woodworking was a significant part of farm shop in the ninth grade and I still have several of the items I made there. One item I made was a toolbox — my father gave me various woodworking tools (he got them through the Johnson lumber yard where he was the part-time bookkeeper), and I made a box to hold them.

Toolbox


Once when I was back in Gowrie, either on vacation or on a stopover on a Shell trip, my mother must have mentioned that it was up in the hayloft of the barn back of the little brown house along with the remnants of the toy farm machinery that I had made while we were living on the Peterson farm. I found it and the toy remnants and sent them to California by railway express, I wonder if it wasn’t after my father died that it happened. He it was who gathered up the toy remnants when my parents left the farm after the war was over. Now it no longer has my tools in it, rather my stock of nails, screws etc.

Wooden toys


My present toolbox I began while I was rooming at the Wilsons’ on 411 Bonnie Drive while I was still unmarried. I bought the tools I now have off and on, most were purchased before my marriage, at least the large tools.

I guess this liking for tools and woodworking developed from my farm shop experience. On the farm there was a small room at the northeast corner of the house, just off the back hall. Here it was that I kept my toolbox and tools, and where I often worked making the toy tractors, other implements and the buildings for our model farms. In the room was a large cabinet that I seem to recall my parents having purchased when the old church building and its accoutrements were disposed of when the new church was built. It housed my toolbox with my tools.

Several years ago, Vincent gave me a small book shelf or bookends (the whole thing was in one piece) which he had saved from when my mother’s furniture was disposed of after she had died. It had been with them until they cleaned out their belongings after they sold the farm acreage they owned. Or maybe Vincent did not send it but rather gave it to me and I packed it up and mailed it to Oregon.

Bookends


Since then I have refinished it, correcting some of the inadequacies of my youthful efforts and repairing a place where it had been broken and glued back together again unevenly. I’d made the bookends of oak, which was the wood ai also used for a table I made — the last time I saw it it was standing in the boys’ room on the farm near the east window. What happened to it I have no idea.

While we were on the farm I found in the loft of the old granary the old sewing machine that my grandmother had had in the early days on the farm. The wooden parts were black walnut. There was a sort of cover that was placed over the machine when it wasn’t being used and I used this to make a sewing box for my grandmother. This was one of my farm shop woodworking projects. Later after my grandmother died, my mother had it, I think she used it to store photos in etc. I reacquired it when she too died. I refinished it, put on some better hinges and I use it for storing various odds and ends. It sits on my dresser in our bedroom.

Wooden box