Advice to Dads: Know Carpentry

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
October 7, 1961

   AS THE Father of a 12-year-old I confess some shortcomings.  I'm more than 40 years my son's senior, for one thing.  This can't be helped but it rules me out as his competitor in anything more taxing than pool or ping pong.
   But an even worse shortcoming is my ignorance of carpentry.  This liability hurts little when a child is too small to notice your bungling.  But in the march of time he gets interested in construction jobs and starts giving you odd looks when you try to help him.  From then on until girls get his mind off hammer, nails and hobby shows you are an expanding cipher.

   MY LACK of manual skill tried me sorely a fortnight ago.  To attain Star rank in the Boy Scouts, my son had but one attainment to go-- to build a bird feeder.  He broke the glad tidings to his mother and me on a Saturday morning.  The feeder should be finished, he said, by the next Monday evening prior to the court of honor.
   He ruined my breakfast eggs by exhibiting the plans for the thing.  As a matter of principle I am hostile to plans and directions.  They are either wrong or incomplete and their primary purpose is to befuddle.

   BUT I WAS smart enough to see that the boy needed some lumber we didn't have.  And about 1 p.m., after the lumber yards were closed, he agreed with me.  We cased the nearby stores for boxes and crates they were out of and then, as is our custom in crisis, threw ourselves on the mercy of friends.
   By mid-afternoon on Sunday the junior builder declared he was ready and inquired about the saw.  It happened that this article was 100 miles away at the lake.  So was the hammer.  We did have a keyhole saw, though, that was a tool of sorts but qualified more as an heirloom.  It had gathered dust for decades and must have been handed down by a remote ancestor.  My son sighed and shook his head, but seized it and went to work.

   I HADN'T the heart to watch the struggle and went upstairs, telling him the responsibility was his and that if I made the bird feeder for him it wouldn't be right.  "You're not kidding," he said.
   My pique at this crack wore off as my pity grew.  About nightfall, after listening for hours to his labored sawing and cursing my uselessness, I returned to the basement to check up.  I found him attacking a board with my bucksaw--taken from the garage--and using our luxurious ping pong table, which also is an integral part of my study, as a sawhorse.
   I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  But I did know he needed help, even mine.  So, by this time , did he.  With an assist from Neighbor Tatam, who loaned us some tools, and following loud wrangling over the accursed plans, we came up with a bird feeder.  Just for the record, we didn't have to borrow nails.  I found some in a jelly glass on a shelf between the dictionary and World Almanac.

   MY PROGENY was triumphant and appreciative.  I was pleased but gnawed by remorse.  I wondered why I couldn't be one of those fathers who has a work bench, power tools, lumber and know-how.
   My wife said it would be a good idea if I enrolled in an adult education class in woodworking.  No doubt it would, but I could only shake my head and plead weariness.  Here was the age factor again.
   But next time there's something to build I may be a little more help.  I may remember to bring the hammer and saw home from the lake.


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