William

One of these days someone will bother to pick me up, turn me over and read the name of my 5-year old original creator/owner, Pablo. Then you scoffers will be sorry.

Peter

Critics rave, "Wooden Thing is a must-buy if you are a collector of such things," and, "Since the penny's included, it's really only ninety-nine cents, plus shipping."

###Barbara Blauborg of Billings, Montana gushes, "I used to have a lump, but when I bought Wooden Thing, the lump disappeared, and I didn't have to go to the doctor! Do you any see evidence that Wooden Thing DIDN'T save my life?"

###E.B. Moom of Springfield, Alaska, natters, "I have a sandalwood statue of Jesus and Hanuman shaking hands, and I have Wooden Thing. Those are the two things I have."

###Time is running out. A fungal blight that infects wood with large black blisters has escaped the laboratories of Pine And Cedar, LLC, and is running rampant. It took down our popsicle sticks, it took down our nightstands, and it even took down our logs, which didn't even get half a chance. Now almost all of our wood has got black blisters all over it and we're here pulling our hairs out of their sockets because we don't have much left to sell for crying out loud.

###Which is to say, if you purchase Wooden Thing in the next five minutes, we'll also include a nickel, in addition to the free penny.

###"Now that's six cents I've saved so far!" cheers L.F. Entmann of Ohio, Wyoming.

###Tired of wooden things without any moving parts? P&C LLC-brand Wooden Thing comes with free object on a screw which can be turned around to YOUR choice of up to 285 different degrees!

###The complimentary screws are made of a magnificent blend of our finest iron and carbon, an alloy better known as "ibon."

###Call now and we'll throw in Wooden Thing's Yellow Stand, which if turned upside-down could be used as a wonderful yellow cup, perfect for barbeques, Christmas, lying around the house, or sharing with a friend.

###So call now for Christ's sake. For ninety-four cents, plus shipping, you could have Wooden Thing in the palm of your clutches as we speak.

###This message was bought AND paid for by Pine and Cedar LLC, a division of Pinophyta Quadricorp, a Cohen and Cohn Company.

Camille

"What's this?"###
"I made you a smoke cutter. When you need to cut some smoke, you just pull this out right here and-" demonstrating the satisfying click "whammo the smoke is cut. You can cut it into two pieces, three pieces. . .I don't care you can cut it all day but it stays cut with this here. It won't cloud up on you again it is g-o-n-e gone." He whistled in through his teeth. ###
"Wow. Can I use it in a fire?" ###
"I don't care where you use it. You can use it here, or when you go to a bar and it's too smoky, or when you breathe into the cold."###
I thanked him and we left, and I clutched my brand new smoke cutter, slicing the air over and over all the way home. Mom said it was a good visit. "It's good honey, when he makes things for you. It's good to feel useful."

jerrine wire

“Butch!”
Others would call the dark little house a shack. When I remember my father’s voice booming from the ripped screen door banged behind him. I trembled like every stick of that frail shelter I called home.
“Butch! I know you are here, get your sad tail out here! Don’t you make me look for you; you’ll be real sorry when I get ahold of you!”
Time has not softened the memory of the gray dry planks in the cubby above the kitchen are like armor that fits no one but me. If I don’t move he won’t find me.
My little funny baby knows how I feel. There is only one person who listens. He is comic not mean. When I look I at Baldy I have to laugh. When I hold baby close the rigid body doesn’t hug me back, I understand. No one wants Baldy but me; other girls want pretty dolls. Why would I want some fake cute face that reminds me of how ugly I am; some candy pink doll with curls and pink cheeks. I could paint on some scars so she’d look more like me. Forget the curls, father says they only give shelter to bugs. I love my happy crazy Baldy; I will never give her up not even when I grow up and run away to New York City.

Alan

Machines

###

My father made machines. Nothing practical, nothing he could actually use, just scraps of ideas from the bits and pieces that accumulated in the workshop that had come with the house. He wasn’t particularly deft with his hands, and certainly not the kind of dad who could re-roof the house or build a patio the way our neighbor Mr. Carlson did. No, my father could change the washer in a drippy sink or hammer an extra nail into the squeaky back step, but anything beyond a simple repair required that my mother haul out the tattered yellow pages from its place in a kitchen drawer and call someone who made a living being handy. When the plumber or the electrician would arrive in a rattletrap truck heaving a gleaming toolbox beside him, my father would disappear. Sometimes to take our dog Max for a walk in the woods by the reservoir, sometimes to his desk at the tubing mill where he could lose hours shuffling papers and checking his sums. Occasionally on these days I would ask to go with him—the acrid smell of the factory floor was intoxicating to me and with a little cajoling my father would allow me to check my arithmetic homework on the stolid adding machine by his boss’s desk—but most often the answer was no.

###

“Your mother needs you here,” he would say. “Try to be helpful while Mr. Barnard fixes the sink.”

###

Mr. Carlson next door was a handsome man, even as a boy I recognized that. During the week he was like the dads I saw on television: gray suit, slim tie, hat, his hair Brylcreemed to such a black luminescence that it reminded me of the enormous onyx brooch my mother wore whenever somebody died. On weekends, however, he discarded the suits and favored instead khakis and chambray shirts left open at the throat and rolled above his elbows. During the course of his work, several more of the buttons on his shirt would come undone, revealing the broad brown expanse of his chest. I would lie under the most effusive of my mother’s peony bushes and stare. The blooming aroma above me was heady and distracting, but I found it my inexplicable duty to remain where I was and study the powerful way Mr. Carlson accomplished even the most delicate task.

###

Once, my father found me in my hiding place, but instead of scolding me for being a snoop, he just glanced from me to Mr. Carlson and back, then retreated to his workshop in the garage. Behind me, I could hear the bandsaw come rumbling to life, but I remained transfixed on what was happening next door: Mrs. Carlson had appeared, her belly heavy and swollen before her, and handed her husband a beer. He swallowed deeply then pulled her toward him, and when I saw the lingering way he caressed the back of her dress, I gasped.

###

Weeks later, some boyish impulse induced me to dismantle my mother’s new electric stovetop on a night she was expecting company. She immediately ascended into her standard coloratura of rage, and when I suggested that Mr. Carlson would likely be happy to assist me in righting that particular wrong, my father slapped me hard and sent me to my room. Soon after, I could hear Mr. Carlson’s throaty laugh in our kitchen, and as much as a I longed to sneak downstairs, I knew I had to content myself with imagining his looming presence, his tender hands finessing order out of the mess I had made.

###

That night after the party was done and after my mother had retreated to her room, drowsily humming herself to sleep, I heard the familiar whine of the bandsaw. Looking out my window, I saw my father’s silhouette in the lighted door of the garage carefully considering some object he had made. Curious, I crept through the house and out the back door, absconding myself in the peony bush. My father wasn’t in the habit of showing off any of his machines, and as a boy the dusty shelf where they resided held no appeal to me. But my father obviously saw some order in these contraptions, and this night the one he held particularly so. From my hiding place, I could barely see, but I recognized the familiar materials—wood, nuts, bolts—and even the familiar wobbly oblong shape. What was alien to me was the way my father manipulated the thing, brandishing it like a magic trick gone wrong and considering the parts, then folding it like two unlikely halves finding that together they made a remarkable whole.

Steve

The Key
In the heat of the Chilean mountains, Dr.Debelogne of Belgium’s ‘Observatiore Royal de Belgique’ made another of his famous celestial discoveries half a world away from his name sake and only grandchild. Afterward he called home. Uncertain if the call would go through in the remote terrain he waited, listened.
###
Henri?
Henri, can you hear me?
Grandpa, I can hear ___ some of the time.
Can you _____ me now?
Yes, sort __.
Do you _____ it?
What?
Do you have the ___?
Yes, Yes I ____the key with __ now.
###
The key was to the ship, the ship that would carry them beyond their galaxy to the world of Trojan asteroids, comets and Grandpa’s discoveries. The key was modest. Cheap wood, a screw or two, with a folding design. Grandpa was not at home in the wood shop. He had trouble fashioning the simplest of things. But when it comes to things light-years away, there’s no one better.
###
Where are you Grandpa? Still in what’s it’s called?
Yes Henri, it’s called Chile.
Is it cold there Grandpa?
No Henri, they just call it that
Did you find it?
I think so, a small planet this time.
Yes!!! Henri yelled, as the phone hit the floor.
Grandpa are you still there?
Yes, are you ready to mark the key, do you have the pen?
No, Mom has it. Let me get it “Mom - Where is the special pen- Mom!”.
###
A special key needing a special pen for a celestial starship headed to a new planet that Grandpa found only today, this day, September 2nd 1988. The only thing remaining, a special name for the new planet to be marked on the waiting key.
###
Grandpa, I got it.
Alright Henri write this on the key just as I give it to you, ready?
Ready!
OK, first put an __ then ___ a __ 5.
Grandpa you are breaking up.
Be sure you put a line from up to down right to left _____ the five.
Grandpa, what 5?
Henri, start with the R then ____ after that the 5 with the line.
OK, I got it R5 with the line, right?
Henri you are missing the A.
What A grandpa?
The A after the _ but before the _.
I’m not sure I understand Grandpa, is there an A between the 5 and the line?
No, the line is last after the 5, the A is after the R and the R is first.
Ok Grandpa, It’s RA5/. Is that right, RA5/ ?
That’s it Henri, that’s the name on the Key. Now in your best penmanship write that on the key. Keep it safe and we will blastoff as soon as I get home.
OK grandpa, I have things covered on our end, Mom says hi and she loves you.
Tell her I love her too and I love you and miss you both very much.
I love you too Grandpa.
###
With that the line went dead.
Henri Debelogne thought of going back to the observatory. The heat was intolerable. The conversation had left him tired and longing for home. ‘Well at least the key was taken care of’.
On the other side of the Atlantic a little boy pulled the top off a marker and began to print on the side of the key to a starship bound for a small planet, its new name, RA5/.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(4864)_1988_RA5

Mary

I am a self-employed Early Intervention teacher and needed a break. With public radio accompanying me all day in my office and while on the road, I decided to go on the website and see Studio 360’s three photos of significant objects and the wood sculpture won out. It has personality. Multiple personalities. It looks like a plane from one angle or perhaps a car. I look again and it is a bunny with a pointy ear and a well formed eye, looking at me sideways. Perhaps I am looking at this bunny sideways…I can imagine a toddler on the cusp of symbolic play using it as a phone and placing it to his ear. Silence on one end. I sit at my computer screen and wonder. Who made this? Was it a student in a shop class who could not fashion a wooden circle and sacrificed a coin to become a wheel? Was the car an homage to a Lincoln? I chuckle to myself, all alone as I imagine a middle school student with a sense of humor similar to mine. Perhaps a patient in a therapeutic art class made this piece of artwork. If so, was the art produced in conjunction with an occupational therapist? A psychologist? Was this wooden sculpture therapy for the mind, the body or simply the soul? Perhaps some grandfatherly type with a box filled with scraps of wood made a toy for his grandchild. Did the child look up at the grandfather and ask “But what does it do?” I imagine his reply “It does whatever you want it to do.” The child and I are limited by our imaginations and eagerness to please. The child wants to please his grandpa. I want to please a wider audience. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder they say. I think how much this wooden car-bunny-plane-phone-use your imagination thrift store find would be worth if its roots (could not help but pun) could be traced back to someone famous. Then I become quite sad as I imagine that it is a lost treasured toy car with a lost wooden wheel. I look back at the photo and it too looks sad. Once beautiful in the eyes of its owner or at least beautiful in the eyes of the artist’s mother. I imagine a grandmotherly type who held onto this kitschy artwork for years. Once a child herself, then a mom and then a grandmother who could not part with something that her own child made years ago. She used to proudly tell her grandchild “Your daddy made this a long time ago.” Years before he left for the war it sat on her shelf. It sat and sat as a reminder of happier times. It sat on the shelf next to his picture until she forgot that the war was over, that the child was now a man and that her grandchild not her son. Her cloudy mind devoid of memories was unsure whether her son ever made it home. Her mind was soon devoid of ever having a son. After they cleared off her shelf, they donated all sorts of treasures incapable of jogging one more memory to the thrift shop. Then they donated her to a nursing home and no one would even consider buying her even for a dollar.

Chris

### I'm going to take advantage of this period of lucidity to tell you of a battle won . Through the hands of my beautiful Sara, now in high school , my words are finding their way to paper .
### When I was a younger man , I had a small woodworking shop in the basement . Tinkering with wood, listening to the radio and smoking my pipe , were the rituals I practiced to wander into my own mind . Possibly , the prime reason for basement dwelling was to smoke my pipe , a banned activity in the upper parts of the house . A law that was put in place while my beloved wife was alive , and had never been repealed . I sometimes had trouble remembering her face, but not her rules .
### The grandchildren would often join me in my shop and suffer through my stories and smoke ,while I fabricated a simple toy for them as a reward for their time spent with me . Spears of guilt and regret occasionally stab at me , reminding me that I risked their health because of my smoking addiction .
### I have been blessed with quite a few grandchildren . Through the 20 years or so that I was in the toy making business , I've built enough furniture to fill many doll houses . So many rubber band guns, I could outfit a small army . Cups and balls, rocking horses, a toy chest or two , and once, by request, a pair of wooden shoes for a school presentation about Holland .
### Sara, the youngest of the grandchildren, shared her Granny's distain for my smoking . By the time she came along, I couldn't always remember where I set my tobacco . We would look for it together, with her often commenting that she hoped we wouldn't find it . She was somewhere in the age range of 4 feet tall , when she requested a project that was quite surprising to me . In a small and squeaky voice , "Poppy, you always keep your 'bacco in a plastic bag. Let's make a box to keep it in . A small one you can keep in your pocket so you'll know where it is . "
### The "box", as we've called it since the beginning, had to be of simple design for two reasons . The first reason , was that my time with the children was limited by my increasingly rapid fatigue. The second reason being that I was no longer permitted to use table saws or routers or any tool that was deemed unsafe by my doctor or my children . I could use hand saws, planers , sandpaper, a drill and various hand tools like hammers , clamps and screwdrivers . The design was simple , a rounded , rectangular shape with a pivoting lid that could slide over to cover the cavity where my 'bacco would live . I found an old scrap of wood that was already the proper size . Sara helped me file and sand the corners . I sawed about a quarter of an inch off of the top that would become the lid . The lid section was cut on a diagonal line , so half of the top would be fixed in place while the other half would move on it's pivot , creating a good closure fit for the two piece top . With Sara's help, we screwed both lid pieces in place and glued one of the halves . She painted the wood stain on the box, all by herself . I told her that all we had to do now is wait for it to dry . I promised her I wouldn't use it until her next visit .
### When next she came, we went downstairs to put our project to use . Together, we discovered that there was an error in our design . The lid worked perfectly to cover a compartment that had not been hollowed out ! "Sara, it looks like I goofed up. There's no place in this box for me to keep any 'bacco ! " Her face beamed with pride and glee . Grinning from ear to ear , she looked at me with those big, brown eyes and said, " It's OK Poppy, I think it's better that way ."
########################################
A footnote from myself, Sara.######
We built the box when I was 10 years old . After the box was built, I don't remember ever seeing Poppy smoke again. He did, however, carry the box with him at all times . I wrote the story, as he told it to me from an assisted living facility, when I was 16 . As a reward for my secretarial service, he gave the box to me . Poppy passed away at the age of 74, when I was 17 years old . The box project took place about the time he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease . Now in my 30's, I carry the box with me in my purse .

Meryl

Significant Objects: Wooden Thing

It was the one time I was there when something significant happened: Franco had died. I was trying to land a job teaching English in Madrid, but the whole city closed up to mourn--or, in some cases, to celebrate. ###

It was no use trying to look for work, so my friend Carol and I took the train to Andalusia. We stayed in whitewashed hotels with flower-filled balconies. We were low on cash, so we created our meals from what we found at the local markets. ###

Carol and I browsed the tourist boutiques, but we didn’t have a budget for souvenirs. We said “solamente mirando” to the shopkeepers, hoping it meant “just looking.” ###

One morning we were inspecting the carved figures in a small boutique in Granada. We giggled and wondered who would purchase one of the items--it looked like a piece of nothing. It was a block of wood, rounded on the ends, with a couple of screws. We dubbed it “Wooden Thing” and tossed it around a bit, laughing at the objects on which tourists waste their money. ###

Then Carol dropped “Wooden Thing” on the tile floor. A piece broke off. ###

The store owner appeared at our side immediately, telling us what was clear in any language--we were expected to pay for the broken figurine. “But we have no money--no dinero!” we tried to explain. She either did not or would not understand us and Carol handed over our food budget for the next three days. She was now the proud owner of “Wooden Thing.” I teased her and said she should start a collection. ###

Carol and I remained friends, and several years later, when I got married, she sent me “Wooden Thing” as a wedding present. It has travelled with me for the past 30 years and always lives in an honored spot on my desk. “Wooden Thing” reminds me of Spain, of hunger, of travel and of friendship. I will always treasure it. ###

Joe

Seeing the "wooden object brought back many wonderful memories of so many years ago.
The object, in those days was called a Slider. In our woodworking class the construction of a Slider had to be completed to the satisfaction of the teacher before we could attempt more ambitious projects.
To complete a Slider, the student would have to use just about all of the hand tools in the shop.
I can remember Mr. Catino with his hands behind his back walking around the class observing our progress or in many cases, our lack of progress.
After the Slider was complete, it was use to "hold an angle" that is to move the small blade, measure an angle and then transfer that angle to the project you were working on. It was, after all a very useful tool.
Many of us having completed our Sliders would carve our initials into the bottom and carry them in our pockets with pride.
Thanks for the reminder of the Slider.

Suzanne

For Sale: Homemade Ribbon Keeper.###My dad made this for my mom, so she could thread ribbons and cording through it, to keep it from tangling. When I was little, my mom used to make us Easter hats. Every year, she would say "Time to take a trip downtown!" and we would go to the millner's in an old building on Stanwyx Street, perhaps no longer there, to buy "millinery supplies" (I loved that store -- so many interesting nooks and crannies with oddly shaped things and dusty bits no other store ever sold (those fascinator head wear the Brits make come close)), and my sister and I would always end up with interesting "scrap bags" to make things for our Barbie dolls (25 cents a bag!). But my mom would buy ribbons and trimmings to make our Easter hats, ribbons she would sew round and round, on a head form (or our real heads!), until a hat (sometimes with a brim) appeared. The spools of ribbons, she always kept in a box, and would pull them out as she sewed, but they would tangle. My dad got the idea for this keeper because he was helping my uncle build a sailboat in his garage. The boat needed all kinds of cord keepers, which got my dad thinking. So he took some extra wood blocks from my uncle and made this for my mom. You open it, slide the ribbon in, so that as the ribbon pulls out, the keeper stays closed. The ribbons and banding my mother used for hats tangled much less when she used the keeper. If it's too narrow or too loose, you adjust the screws and maybe add or remove a washer for spacing.###I know people don't make hats that much any more, it's too easy to buy them from China. My mom's hands became too arthritic, and after the 70's, hats were just not the thing anymore (Catholic women didn't need to cover their heads in Church, after Vatican II, you know). My mom and dad have both been dead for seven years now (my uncle died more than a decade ago, and that first sailboat is long sold (he had to take out a garage wall to get the boat out, my mother's sister, my aunt was so mad -- but the boat was fun to sail (my uncle did much better with the second boat)). I am still cleaning out things I salvaged from my parents' house before it was sold. Neither my sister nor I make hats or things with ribbons. But if you do (maybe you make period costumes for plays or movies?), you will like this. It is smooth and will not snag the ribbons.###Price: $5

Nina

When Daddy gets the call that Grandpa is dying, he books a flight for all of us to Wisconsin. Grandpa is eighty-nine and daddy says he has a memory disease. He won’t know who we are and he can’t remember how to do things like open a can of soup or tie his shoes. Sarah, Ella, and me share one suitcase because Daddy worries about the good luggage getting stolen or lost. Ella asks why he has the good luggage if he’s not going to use it and he tells her to just pack light because Grandpa can’t see anyway.###
Wisconsin is gray and blurry. It’s raining when we land at the airport. It takes us an hour to drive out of the city to Grandpa’s house. Daddy makes calls on his cell phone in the back of the taxi. Ella reads while Sarah and I stare out the window and count things, like blue cars and the telephone polls that connect the highway together like stitches. We get there and a fat nurse in a white dress opens the door looking like she doesn’t sleep. Grandpa is yelling something from deep inside the house. The nurse sighs.### "Ambien only makes him more hyper," she says.###
Daddy and Mama follow her down the long carpeted hallway to Grandpa’s bedroom. They tell us to wait here, to turn on the television. On the coffee table is a bowl of funny looking things: a pair of joined metal rings, a cube made up of lots of colored squares, a metal ball inside a little jail, a piece of wood with a trap door on it. I pick up the little wooden thing and move the trap door and there’s a penny under it.###
“It’s a magic trick,” says Ella, and she grabs it from my hand. “Look, I can make the penny disappear.” And she does. My mouth is open wide. ###
“How?”###
“Grandpa was a magician, and he’d never want me to tell you,” she says. I grab it back from her, but then Daddy calls for us to come back and see Grandpa. In his room, Mama is sitting on the bed asking questions. Would you like your slippers? Would you like to go out into the garden? Talking to him like he’s a little kid. I stand in the doorway, trying to balance on one leg.###
“Hi, Grandpa,” says Ella. He is sitting straight up in the bed shaking his arms out from underneath the covers.###
“Nancy? What the—, Tom, tell Nancy to get the hell outta here.” He’s laughing kind of scary like he’s angry, and he’s pointing at Ella. She looks at Daddy and runs out.###
“These my daughters, you remember, Dad?” Daddy says and he waves Sarah and me into the room. We stand with our backs against the wall. Then grandpa sees the thing in my hand. ###
“Come here,” he says. “I can’t take this damn eye patch off until December.” He’s not wearing any eyepatches. I come up to the bed and drop the penny trick into his dried out hand.###
“Want to see some real magic, Nancy?” he says to us. He slides open the trap door and the penny falls out. He puts it back and slides the door closed once more.### “Now wave your hands over it like you seen me do.” I do what he says cause I'm scared. He slides the wood back and it’s not a penny in there anymore, it’s a dime.### Mama says, ohhh. Slowly, Grandpa leans in real close to me and whispers in my ear,
"Promise to get me out of here and I'll teach ya how it's done." Then he holds out the dime to me and winks.

Tim

Block and Wood###
###
Block and wood###
What limb sacrificed wood for you?###
Block and screw###
What human hand fashioned you?###
Begotten without obvious function###
Rounded at each end###
Perhaps our shortcoming###
Not yours###
Were you not able to satisfy?###
Your blade dulled###
Your master fled?###
Only to find yourself###
Nearer to the fire###
Than one might expect###
Next in line###
When the miracle occured###
An inexplicable extinguishment###
Ending not in fire###
Nor burial###
Nor rubbish heap###
With the rest of history###
We wish forgetten or buried###
But in Vintage Thrift###
As an object found###
Five well spent###
No usual boutique piece###
Kurt and Rob perplexed thought,###
"How came you hence?"###
You could ask ###
Much the same###
About us###
Dusted, the nearly discarded###
Becoming Studio art###
Almost###
Tchotchke###
What be your destiny?###
We might soon see.###

Elizabeth

Before Woody and Buzz Lightyear (###),
the Velveteen Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh (###),
there was a marionette fashioned (###)
by an old carpenter who knew (###)
Pygmalion of Ancient Greece (###)
carved a woman out of stone, (###)
and falling so in love with her, (###)
forced the gods to condone (###)
turning her to flesh and blood: (###)
a real woman to hold and love! (###)
And so, Mister Geppetto, (###)
a carpenter by trade, (###)
carved from a block of pinewood (###)
Pinocchio, a child to raise. (###)
The old man wished on stars (###)
until the Blue Fairy took pity, (###)
turning wood to flesh and blood: (###)
Pinocchio, a boy, real and witty! (###)
Gepetto's wood shop was sawn away (###)
by the sharp edges of time. (###)
Now only Pinocchio's story remains; (###)
yet it's been said you may find (###)
a bit of wood or lasting fragment (###)
in forgotten corners of quiet shops. (###)
These are the misfit pieces, (###)
riddling shapes with moving tops, (###)
tossed aside, forgotten, (###)
their purposes rendered and done. (###)
No blue fairies or goddesses (###)
made them immortal lovers or sons. (###)
No stonecutters or carpenters (###)
wished on stars above. (###)
These odd-shaped pieces (###)
were left un-storied and unloved. (###)
But perhaps on day an artist's work (###)
will fashion them anew, (###)
and thus imagined, flesh and blood, (###)
they'll be real too. (###)

Byra

2 nuts, 2 bolts, and 2 pieces of wood ###
emphasized what I couldn't do and what I wasn't to my Dad.###
###
2 nuts, 2 bolts and 2 pieces of wood###
spelled out the onset of poor self esteem.###
###
2 nuts, 2 bolts and 2 pieces of wood###
all you need is a little imagination he said.###
all you need is to try he said.###
all you need is to make something he said.###
finish something he said.###
###
2 nuts, 2 bolts and 2 pieces of wood###
turned into something unusable###
useless###
###
2 nuts, 2 bolts and 2 pieces of wood###
turned into a wedge made of wood###
between me and Dad.###
###
2 nuts, 2 bolts and 2 pieces of wood##3
thrown in a box of junk.###
###
2 nuts, 2 bolts and 2 pieces of wood###
thrown on a shelf in a thrift store.###
###
2 nuts, 2 bolts and 2 pieces of wood###
symbol of a lost relationship.###

Rick

The Secret Compartment###“What’s this, Mom?”###A hand no bigger than mine had been grasped a small, rough, wooden object, fished from the box of my mother’s few effects.###An object unfinished where I had been learning to file its ends, an object without the intended “secret” compartment that would have come later.###And if that compartment had been there, what would have been in it? A piece of my soul? Of my shattered childhood? Of a connection never quite made between “Dad” and “daughter?”###“It’s a box I was working on with one of my mother’s guys back when I was just a couple of years older than you.”###Such euphemisms! My mother — not a grandmother to my child she’d never met. Her guys — none of them my “Dad,” though that’s what I was taught to call each of them.###Mother had always started her relationships firm in the faith that the new “guy” would be “the” one. A worthy helpmeet, a White Knight, a perfect “Dad” for me. My biological “Dad” had in fact vanished long before I was born, and there were two “Dads” before George came along when I was in fifth grade. I repress the count of those who came after him.###George had come closest to being “Dad” for me. A carpenter, his credo was “if you know how to make something with your hands, you’ll never go hungry.” Wood was what he knew, so when he decided to teach me to make something with my hands, wood was the medium.###“We’ll make a tiny box with a secret compartment for your house-key (for I was a latch-key kid) and a slot for a quarter to call us if you need to, and a sliding lid with your name underneath where nobody can see it until they open the box, and…” George's enthusiasm was infectious, so even though only boys did carpentry, I got enthusiastic, too.###We worked during the spring holiday the year I was 12. I learned to use a compass and ruler to make the patterns on brown paper, and George showed me something called an angle square, laughing because “it can’t be angle and square at the same time!” With it, I plotted the pattern for the swinging lid.###I couldn’t yet use the sharp-toothed saws, but after George had roughed out the rounded ends of the box, and after we screwed the lid to the body, he taught me to use wood-files to finish smoothing the ends. “And, you see, the ends can be both flat and round at the same time, depending on how you look at them!###“Once they’re all smooth, we’ll work on the secret compartment!” George promised.######That’s when George disappeared from my life, killed at a pedestrian crossing. He was married, but not to my mother, and so his tools — the compass, the ruler, the angle square, the files, the saws, and everything, went back to her. ###And my mother soon found a new guy.###

Hannah

My girlfriend gave me junk for Christmas. Maybe it’s not actually junk, but I can’t figure it out, so it’s junk to me. It’s a block of wood, rounded on each end, maybe five inches across. The top is divided in two, and each half hinges on a screw. It’s not hollow, though. You can’t keep anything in it. You can’t do anything with it, as far as I can tell. Someone, probably the same whacked-out soul who thought this was an intelligent use of wood, wrote “Rs 5/” in pencil across the bottom, which is basically Greek to me. I have no idea what Kelly was thinking.
####
Christmas was three months ago. The trees are budding, the bravest of the flowers are opening up, and every few days or so, the temperature tops 60˚. Kelly loves this time of year. She finds every excuse to be outdoors, whether she’s alone on her bike or breaking out the picnic basket with a bunch of friends. My allergies try to kill me every spring, so I’m never quite as happy as she is, but I do enjoy seeing real sunlight and grass that’s green again. Everything’s a little greyer this year, though, without Kelly’s auburn hair adding color everywhere I go. She left last week.
####
I’d like to say I don’t know where I went wrong, play the martyr role, but I know it’s not true. I know exactly where I went wrong. Where we went wrong, I should say. I’m a firm believer in “it takes two to tango.” We both had our expectations. Life with her was a constant adventure. She always had a museum or a graveyard or a neighboring town she wanted to wander around for the day, and she had a list of at least fifteen countries she wanted to see in person before she turned fifty. Problem was, she wanted me to be an adventure, too, and I’m much more of a nine-to-five, picket fence kind of guy. I was happy to stroll along the river’s edge for a day and eat at a new restaurant from time to time, but it’s hard for me to even picture jetting to Norway at a moment’s notice, let alone actually doing it. I wanted to make her my wife, but she was already married to her imagination.
####
Kelly always said my apartment could be the picture in the dictionary next to the word “austere.” That’s not quite fair, but I’m not a pack rat by any stretch of the imagination. But now that Kelly’s gone, I wish I’d kept more stuff from the past year. She kept buying me trinkets from the towns we visited, even though she knew damn well I hate trinkets. I gave them away. Some I gave to my sister, who loves that sort of thing. She might give them back, but I also hate to ask. I can already hear her saying “I told you so,” because she tried to get me to keep them. But I’ll have to ask, because I can’t stand the thought that all I have left is a couple of photographs and this god-forsaken, useless, maddening, unknowable wooden thing.

Jeff

When the axe came in and severed me from everything that I have ever known I thought that I was dying. And I guess that I was. ###
I did not then know words like trunk, branches, lumberjack. Or Seperation. Or death. I began to know them, as I was stacked on the back of the great truck next to my brothers and my sisters. Once, they had swayed next to me. ###
I still do not have words to describe what it was like, when I went from being that living tree into the wood that I am now. I was severed. I was turned into a legion. I was metamorphed. ###
The first hands that ever held me with Love are her hands. It was a wide space. Open. I think that who I am, it was not so much that it flowed out of her fingers. It is that she was shaping my internality as much as those cruel saws had once shaped the outside of me. ###
I felt so different. And not different only from what I had been before. You see I can still feel, distantly, that which was once a part of me, that which I was a part of. I know that my… call them brothers or sisters. I know that my brothers or sisters came to be things of need. ###
My brothers or sisters they came to be chairs. And firewood. And support beams, forever hidden by siding. I am not jealous of them. ###
Most of the time, I am not jealous of them. Because her hands shaped me for something else. Her eyes ran across my surface. And there were more saws. But I did not need to even forgive her for that. By the time that I was a pair of elongated ovals, a pair of round-end rectangles, by that time, it seemed like this possibility, this true nature had hovered within me. All along. ###
When I was painted by her caloused hands, it was something of a caress. And just a moment of wrongness, of strangeness. You see, when that paint clung wetly to my surfaces, it was, for the first time, not right. It was close. But not right. ###
And then I dried. And my faith was not just restored, but it was made greater. I dried. And it was as I was meant to be. How could I have missed it? I was half of who I was meant to be. And now? Now, I was closer. ###
Can I explain what it was like to be embedded? Would you understand what it was like, when my two halves were joined into one whole, and when I/We were joined with that metal. And made complete. And we/I were almost finished. ###
Most of the time I am not jealous of the chairs and the tables and the picture frames and the paper and the toilet paper. I am art, you see. ###
I was art, you see. ###
That fine line, not down the middle of one of my halves was the last thing that needed to be done. I was complete. And then it came. ###
I was art, you see. I was in the studio. And the people looked at me in wonder. It is what I was made for. ###
That time came to an end. I was in her work shop. And then her closet. And then she died and I miss her. ###
They took her things and brought them to that place. They sat in the chairs and beheld the picture frames and they knew what these things were, and they loved them, a little bit. ###
I was marked in that time. The pencil came from a tree that was like the thing I had once been. Before. What is Rs/ 5? Who is Rs/ 5? ###
I do not know what they mean. And they don’t know what I mean. And it is because they do not know what I am… I don’t know what I am. What am I now? Won’t you tell me? Will you tell me?

Susan

I have vague memories from my early days of being part of a living, growing, tree. In the forest where I grew I was serene and content to provide a home for nesting birds and protection for the forest animals.###
Then one day there was a terrible noise as men with chain saws arrived. In horror we trees watched as our neighbors were cruelly cut and came crashing to the ground. The screams were terrible. My tree was one of the victims and my sap still runs cold when I hear the whine of saws.### I became part of a board that went to a lumber yard and was bought by a man named Harvey Kutz. Most of my board was used to make birdhouses, thereby ironically becoming once again a home for birds. I, however, was just a little piece of scrap and would have been swept up and thrown away except that Harvey Kutz had a brainstorm which rerquired a small piece of wood like me. ###Once again I was cut then for the first time sanded and screwed. Harley worked hard to make sure my parts fit and worked smoothly. Then I was put into a tiny box and presented to his wife Mildred. "Ohhhhh! Harvey!" I could hear her exclaim as she shook the box rattling me quite a bit, "What could this BE?" I could hear the crinkle of paper as she unwrapped the box then the lid came off and a pair of bespectacled eyes fixed themselves on me in puzzlement. I thought I also detected a bit of disappointment in them. There was a moment of silence. Then she asked, "Harvey, what IS this?" "I invented it myself" he replied proudly,
"It's a recipe card holder so you can cook your devine dishes without getting the cards soiled." Mildred rallied and gave him a kiss saying, "You're so clever Harvey! It's just what I needed."
###I was happy to be wanted and to have a purpose in life. Unfortunately, I wasn't big enough to do the job and even small recipe cards were too heavy for me to hold up and we fell over constantly. I was put aside.### For years I lived in the back of the kitchen 'junk' drawer unused. I wasn't lonely as my best friend was a wooden doorknob who shared memories of being a tree same as me. We rejects in the drawer told each other stories of our earlier days like Key whose lock was long gone. He had once had the very important function of opening and locking a strong box where valuables were kept. One day our lives were disrupted when all of us were dumped into a box and taken for a ride. We ended up in a thrift shop where we were tagged and put on shelves.###There I tried to relate to the other things on the shelf but they looked down on me because of my small size and questionable worth. I was very depressed.###One day not long ago two men came into the store and one of them actually picked me up! I felt a thrill of being chosen from among all the other objects on the shelf. I could hear them muttering in amazement as I was carried to the register and actually purchased! A whole new life was opening up! Then, like a celebrity, I was photographed and introduced to thousands of people who would wonder at my unique attributes. I have never been happier since losing my tree form. I hope the loving care that Harvey put into making me is finally recognized. He wasn't a great inventor but he was a good man.

Nick S.

One day, the tree began to speak to me. I would sit on the the back porch and listen. He pleaded to me for help. He knew that somewhere beneath his rough outer bark was something of beauty. He said he was put here on earth for a reason. He wanted to reach his full potential, but he couldn't do it alone. I spent many hours swinging from his gnarled branches, and relaxing in his shadow. I tried to convince him that he was perfect just the way he was, yet he persisted. Not a day went by without him asking: “Is today the day?” Until the constant nagging finally broke me, and I left. I wandered the aisles of the hardware store looking for the sharpest ax they had. I had never killed a friend before, and I wanted it to be as quick, and as painless as possible. When I returned carrying the glistening silver ax over my shoulder, the wind kicked up, and he began to sway to and fro. It was a dance of pure joy. The first swing penetrated deep into his flesh. I wriggled the blade loose, and sap came pouring out of the open wound. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I cocked back for another swing. The second blow was easier, and soon he fell to the ground. Hidden within that dead pile of wood was a thing of beauty, and I only had to whittle away, inch by inch, until I found it. Eventually, it was finished. I had condensed the essence of my best friend down to something more beautiful than even he could have imagined. I carried him with me until the day I died, and not one day went by when I couldn't hear him saying: “Thank you.”.