The Right Stuff

Of all the things we grandchildren recall about our Grandfather Bill "Golly" Fish, his enormous ears and his missing finger are often mentioned. Not so sure about the ears but it's a documented fact that he lost his finger in his woodworking shop - that dusty old building behind the North Main Street foursquare where he lived.

He wrote:

"This scribe's hobby is working with wood, making coffee tables, floor lamps, table lamps, fruit bowls, sandwich trays, card trays, tie racks, magazine racks, book shelves, candle holders, wall brackets and other thingabobs.

"When he isn't sitting a a desk writing Golly - or something - he is at home, out in his wood-working shop, whittling away and thoroughly enjoying himself. In that shop are a bunch of power tools – a bench saw, jig saw, band saw, jointer, drill press, turning lathe, emery wheel, sanding machine and scores of accessories and hand tools.

There is also a supply of choice Potter County lumber for making things.

Folks who see the product of this labor of love often rave over the beauty of the grain of the wood – most of it cherry and maple –  the grace of design and the smooth finish. Occasionally an article is sold for real money but where one is sold, nine are given away."

Many pieces he created found their way into the homes of his children and later his grandchildren and great grandchildren.

For years, I've looked at estate sales, auctions and local antique markets thinking I may find a piece of my family history.

And thus it was in the very back booth at The Right Stuff on Coudersport on Saturday, I spied this and took it down from the shelf.

and turning it over, this.

It's added to my collection for now, but likely to celebrate its centennial in the home of one of the next generation.

Reading As Memory

Writing practice, the act of practicing writing much like one practices an instrument, is a concept I embraced after enrolling in an online six-week intensive with Natalie Goldberg in the height of pandemic shutdown. "Put into words what you most need to say," she suggests.

As an integral part of this practice, she encourages reading the work of others. "I tell students to read deeply ... Reading is important because when you read, you enter the mind of an author, and so you get to study a practiced mind. How do writers create structure in a book? How do they turn phrases and present facts?" 

Finally I have permission to read as part of my work! I've just finished 'Demon Copperhead," the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by one of my favorite writers, Barbara Kingsolver. Dense, difficult and funny all at the same time, it's told in first person, a tale narrated by a young man looking back at his harrowing childhood in the 1990s. "I understood that his voice would be that narrative engine that would get people into this difficult story, and it will get them through to the other side. It needed to be first person, just to give readers that assurance that he's gonna make it because he's telling you this story." Kingsolver wrote in an interview about her book.

The writer weaves the story with a diverse cast of characters - many named and patterned after those in Dickens' David Copperfield, the novel that inspired Kingsolver to re-imagine this tale in our times.

Orphan Tommy Waddles is introduced early in the story and appears and reappears through the 550 pages, finding his place in a newspaper office. And though I was holding my new purple Kindle propped up in bed, there I was back in the Enterprise office. "He was proud of this one, showing me around: machines, computers, the office with a stale ashtray smell that could knock a man flat."

at work in 1978
'composing' room at The Potter Enterprise

"The pegboard on the wall, the giant mess of border tape rolls and X-acto knives.... Clip-art books that were like giant coloring books on different subjects. .... picked over and cut to shreds." 

"Tommy showed me how to feed print columns through the hot wax rollers and help him stick them on the pages. It was all done on a big slanted table with light inside. They had blue pencil marks showing where to line things up. The whole place smelled like hot wax.

"Little cut ends of waxy paper ended up all over everywhere, sticking to your shoes or the backs of your hands, like a baby eating Cheerios."