Unlucky start

I grew up in a household with four siblings, whose birth years ranged from 1959 to 1966. If you do the math, that adds up to a whole lot of small objects in a 2,000-square-foot space. house. As a single parent, my mother did her best to nurture our diverse interests.

I was the only one with wood in my DNA. I had a workshop in the basement that had a pegboard where I hung my tools, and it served as a refuge. I asked for a chainsaw for Christmas one year and was thrilled to find it under the tree. One of my high school neighbors showed me how to use them, because no one in my extended family knew anything about tools.

I remember riding my bike to the lumberyard and buying a piece of plywood – not a whole 4×8 sheet, but part of it. However, it was too big. I wrestled her onto my bike to get her home, balancing her on the seat and handlebars. The ride, which took a few miles, was slow, as you can imagine. I’ll get about 5 yards and the plywood will fall out. An older kid saw me and helped me for a few blocks, steering the bike while I pushed it from behind. I was a determined person, and I needed this plywood for the roof of my latest tree house.

I couldn’t wait for seventh grade so I could finally work in the wood shop. When this idea arrived in 1972, changes were afoot in both the school district and the nation as a whole. We learned on the first day that some of the boys would be assigned to a blacksmith or carpentry shop in the first semester, while others would study Home Economics. I was shocked when my agenda mentioned home economics when it should have mentioned workshop. This was not a mistake. It was bad luck in the draw, and tears were flowing when I got home.

Of course, the girls got the same deal, and I knew deep down, as disappointed as I was, that this was true—that shop class shouldn’t be gender-specific, and that everyone should have the opportunity to learn about the craft, especially in this day and age. Vulnerable.

My luck did not improve in the second semester, when I was assigned to a blacksmith shop. By then, I was convinced that my passion would never extend beyond my basement workshop.

But finally, in eighth grade, the day came to enter the woodshop. Now I will be given the key to unlocking the wonders of the wood world – or so I thought. What I received instead was another shock: the middle school woodshop is just as good as the teacher. The teacher that year could best be described as “struggling,” “uninspired,” and “about to retire,” and the little pine shelf was the project we were all assigned. It was bolted together and sanded hard.

The following year, woodshop was an elective, and I elected it. The projects were a bit more interesting, but I found that I was happiest in my basement workshop making exactly what I wanted. I skipped class more often than I attended, and I was once detained for using an air hose to launch a stake across the room. Was this the beginning of an illustrious career in the furniture industry?

Despite the false starts, the wood world continued to advocate. After obtaining a university degree in English, I learned to build houses. Then I discovered the world of luxury furniture when I was an apprentice for a maker in Seattle. Finally, I reached the pinnacle of woodworking by spending two years studying with Jim Krenov in California before starting my career back on the East Coast.

When I teach now, I’m not burned out. All I need to do is go back to the 50 years of excitement and contentment I felt in my basement workshop, immersed in what seemed so natural, and then take that further.

While recently teaching at a craft school, I met a teacher who had home economics/wood shop alteration experience on the other side. But she wasn’t bothered by that. The shopping class tapped into her budding desire to work with her hands and explore materials, something she may not have previously had access to at school. Her medium turns out to be metal, and she creates the most extraordinary vessels and sculptures.

And in time we get to where we want to be.

– Timothy Coleman’s wood shop is a stand-alone establishment next to his home in Shelburne, Massachusetts. It is still a shelter, although there is no bulletin board.

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