Grandpa's Shop

Written on March 15, 2007:

My grandfather passed away earlier this week. His passing has brought a lot of thoughts and emotions to the surface. I have many good memories of Grandpa from my early years – mostly from about 6 to 12 years old. The 6 years when a boys character begins to be formed in definite ways and it easily influenced by other men who they hold in esteem. For the times we got to see him I can’t say I have one bad memory.

We lived bout 200 miles away and went to their house 2 or 3 times a year as I remember. It’s funny how I seem to remember being there a lot during that period of time, but when I think about how quickly 6 years go by, I’m not really sure how often we went to see them. But when we were there, life was great. Even if the weather was bad and we had to stay in the house all day, it was a great place to be for a young man.

At my grandparents house there were woods, a creek, an old bridge that probably wasn’t all that old, and a shop behind the house where he worked on who knows what. I loved that shop. It seemed like anything could have been built or repaired in there. There were hand tools, power tools and benches, cans and bottles with nails and screws, different species and lengths of wood, lawn tools, gasoline cans, oil cans, and any number of other items that I didn’t have a clue what they were. But they were wonderful, because they belonged to him and he knew what to do with each. When we were there he spent time with us, so I never really saw him working on anything in the shop. But I imagined that he was building something wonderful for Grandma or some neighbor. For all I know, he never build anything in there. Maybe to him it was nothing more than a storage shed, but to me it was a haven made for men.

My brothers and I would fight over who was going to sleep out in the shed with Grandpa on our visits. Mom made us take turns, so between the 3 of us there was always someone left out of getting to sleep in the shop on our two night trips. I remember that David was young enough for awhile that he was a little too scared to sleep out there, so there may have been several trips when Robbie and I got to sleep out there on every trip. Grandpa would have a cot set up with a sleeping bag already laid out when we got there. It was an old army type cot with a wood frame and canvas stretched across it. The sleeping bags were big and the kind with flannel lining on the inside. They were a little too hot in the summer time, so we would sleep on top of them. But in the winter they were perfectly cozy. He had rigged up some string over hooks to the light switch so that we could both get in our bags and turn out the lights without getting back up. I remember that Robbie was really impressed with this and had talked Mom into letting him rig up something similar in our room back home. He would have a camping heater in there as well during the winter. The heater would add a new aroma to the shop. The smells of woods, oils, fuels, and the heater was perfect. Except for my wife’s perfume, the smell of my kids and the aroma of the forest, the smell of a shop is the best thing there is. When a man smells the odor of a well used and not too clean shop, he knows he is where he belongs. You can put a group of men in any setting and listen to them converse and then transport them to a shop of almost any kind and the conversation and tone will change. There’s comfort, comradery, friendly competition, and just a little needling (maybe a lot) that only men can understand and truly appreciate there. I got my first taste of that in my grandfather’s shop. I’ll never forget it. I loved that shop.