Oh Brother

We’d been planning yesterday for a couple of weeks, but the concept of being together again for a day like that was born a long time ago. My brother, who left Illinois for the last time in about 1967, moved home. It gave us the opportunity to see each other at more than weddings and funerals. It was a really good day.

All my siblings lived in Illinois but my older brother Denny, born in 1940. He went away to the Army, came back and finished college, then enlisted in the air force and had a career that took him everywhere. His post air force life kept him near military installations working for defense contractors. Finally he retired for good. Bucking the trend, he left Southern California and built a retirement home near Elgin. He moved back January 28th of this year, and endured the brunt of our bad winter. As the weather warms, and the landscape greens, he’s increasingly glad to be back.

Yesterday was sunny and bright. I arrived mid morning at our brother Don’s house, one I’d helped him build while I was in college. Don was the third of seven of us to pass away. He left us too soon, a victim of cancer at 64. It was in my brief conversations with Denny at Don’s funeral that I realized Denny was serious about coming back. He used that trip as an opportunity for him and his wife to look at real estate. Until then I doubted he would really make the move. He owned a home in a nice town. His patio was shaded by an arbor that grew green grapes like we buy at the store. He had a pool and a hot tub. Winters were a breeze. What were the chances he would give that up to come back to the Midwest?

Turns out they were pretty good. There were complications, financial considerations, a house to sell, aging parents to consider, a cross country move to organize; but he and his wife steadily moved forward. Now they’re here. I hope they’re glad they did it, because I certainly am.

I take for granted seeing the rest of my family. Although we don’t do it as often as we should everyone lives a few hours away. When graduations happen, or holiday celebrations take place, we see each other. That’s the key I think. We’re so wrapped up in communications these days that we somehow think they take the place of real interaction; handshakes and hugs, smiles and eye contact, sitting down and eating together, the unrecorded, unamplified sound of a human voice,. That’s what you miss out on when you live apart. And that’s what you gain when you get back together.

Denny moved back close to where our brother Don lived. His wife, Cheryl, stayed in the house after his death. She first thought after Don was gone she would leave, that the house was too big, and she would feel too alone. But that didn’t happen. We’re so sure about our future sometimes aren’t we? And yet life changes. She stayed in the house I helped Don build in 1972. I know how the studs run in the walls. I remember changes we made in the design. The three of us ate lunch there yesterday, and the house had a familiar feel to it.

Later Don built a second garage/shop down the hill from the house. In the fall of 1972 he went back to his job as junior high school shop teacher, having spent the summer building his dream home, worked a few days and quit. He became a carpenter, and made a living building and remodeling homes for families. Denny, who majored in Industrial Arts and also taught shop for a short time before rejoining the military, is an accomplished wood worker and furniture maker. With Don’s shop basically unused and with Cheryl’s blessing, he moved his extensive collection of tools into Don’s shop, which isn’t far away from his new home. It’s become his man cave so to speak. That’s where we met yesterday. I pulled into Cheryl’s driveway, Denny walked out of my brother Don’s shop, we hugged each other under the oak trees, and commenced work on a project. We’re in the end a farm family, and we relate less by sitting around talking and more by working together. We spent the day making a set of shelves for the shack.

I showed Denny my problem, and made the ask, while there was still snow on the ground. I’ve run out of room for things in my shack. It’s a small place. I have CD’s and books, and various other necessities of shack life, overflowing the shelves I built in between the exposed rafters. I needed a place to put the Mason jars, big and little, I use to serve wine and whiskey to guests. I needed a place for the coffee and tea, sugar cubes, iron tea pot, sardines and beans, various other things I find it hard to live without. There’s a lot going on in the shack. And when you’re out here, especially in the winter, you need things close at hand.

“So what exactly do you have in mind?” Denny asked.

“Nothing exactly. I don’t have a lot of wall space so I want them in the upper corner of the patio door. I never open that door, although I suppose I should make the shelf unit removable if I ever need to. Like moving or taking out something big. I don’t want to block the light. And I’d like for them to you know, look good.”

I have a lot of things that look good. I have a good looking cabinet for the stereo that my friend Joe made. My brother Darwin welded the very cool steel table my small stove sits on. It’s perfect for storing the little chunks of wood I burn. I have a handmade hickory slab writing desk, actually two desks, one for the keyboard nesting underneath. I have a handmade oak clock given to me as a retirement gift. Life is good in the shack.

“What’s the tallest thing you want to put on this shelf? You got a tape measure?“

I dug out a tape and got out the Mason jars I use as wine glasses. I brought down the fancy round tin of good green tea. Denny measured them and started taking notes.

“What’s the widest thing?”

I showed him the iron tea kettle Colleen got me for Christmas, with the matching trivet.

“OK.” And with that Denny got quiet and took to measuring the window frame, the trim, the distances from the window glass to the frame, the trim outside the frame.

“What kind of wood you thinking of?”

“I don’t care. The shack is mostly pine. But anything that looks good.”

“Mahogany is nice to work with. I brought some nice mahogany from California.”

“Denny I’ll leave it up to you.” Everything Denny makes is nice. He’s a detail and finish guy. I’m a rough framing kind of guy. Actually, my real specialty is demolition. I have my own crow bar and sledge hammer. In that way I’m different from my brothers.

“Let me work out a design and then I’ll show you.”

Within a few weeks Denny e mailed me a design, hand drawn on graph paper and scanned, of a meticulously worked out set of shelves. My brother prints really well and draws straight lines. So did Don. I’m not sure why that didn’t get passed down to me but it did not. My plans in comparison are doodles. When I got the e mail with the drawing attached I called Denny.

“This looks great,” I said.

“How about we build them together?”

“I’d love to.”

Retirement is a wonderful thing. I reserved a Thursday from a remarkably uncluttered calendar. That same Thursday last year, in 2013, I was in Springfield agonizing over, and trying to impact, the last Illinois State budget to affect the kids and families served by my former agency. It was both a madhouse, and a mess. I’m sure it was in 2014 as well. But this year I was in my brother Don’s shop spending the day with my brother Denny.

I fished out the mahogany boards; wide, dusty, a little banged up, from a rack near the ceiling.

“Honduran mahogany is the best,” Denny said almost apologetically, “but you can’t get it anymore. This is Asian, probably from the Phillipines. Not quite as pretty, you know the grain and color, but nice to work with.”

Following the plans closely we cut the shelves and the sides. We ripped them to the proper width on the table saw, cut them a little longer than we needed on the radial arm saw, and ran them through the joiner. Then we put them through the planer to make sure they were perfectly and uniformly 5/8ths of an inch thick. Denny decided that would be the best thickness. I had used neither a joiner or planer before. Like a shop teacher, Denny explained their function, and stressed the safety measures we needed to follow. I did the simple stuff, hooking up the dust collector to various machines, switching plugs to the 220 outlet, sanding.

We used the table saw again with a dado attachment, which makes cuts wider, to make grooves in the side pieces into which we would fit the shelves. I never would have done that. I would have used little “L” brackets with screws from the hardware store. In fact, before I asked Denny to make them, I thought I could drill holes in the corners of pine planks, put rope through them, tie knots in the right places, and nail the rope to the rafters, ending up with suspended shelves. As shelves they would have been shaky and crude but they would probably work. Denny’s shelves, however, are the real deal.

It was intricate work. We used a band saw to make the cut away detail on the side pieces and to notch them out where they fit around the trim. Denny took a long time lining up the saw blades to his thin pencil marks on the wood, tapping the machines softly with his fist to reach alignment, then slapping them lightly with his fingers for fine tuning. He measured in 32nds of an inch. I always ignore those marks on the tape measure along with the 16ths, and usually the 8ths.

Denny routed the front edges of each shelf and the trim piece at the top. He keeps his router bits in a special wooden box he made. Not loosely thrown in the box but lined up between little rails. He pointed each out to me, what kind of cuts they make, what he uses them for. Denny has every tool and gadget for wood you can imagine. I have a hammer and a chisel. A dull chisel.

When we’d finished all the pieces we put it together, glued and clamped it. Denny has way more clamps than he can possibly use. With the good glue he used it set up in twenty minutes. He gave me specific final instructions on sanding and applying the finish. We decided given it’s use polyurethane would be best, although we discussed both lacquer and shellac. I’m not to round off the edge he routed while sanding the shelves, as it is an edge design that should remain sharp. He pre-drilled and counter sunk the blocks I’ll mount on the window frame. He even gave me brass screws to use with extras in case I lose a couple. I asked him to sign it, like you would a painting. He has a little branding iron, electric, that he heated up and pressed into a corner under the top shelf.

“Hand crafted by Dennis McClure”

I left Cheryl’s a little after five with the shelf unit in the back seat of the Buick. When I get it finished and hung I’ll post a picture here on the blog. But the shelf is not the story. I’d spent the whole day with my brother. When he left the farm I was about eight. And while we’ve had the occasional day together since, we haven’t had a day quite like yesterday in a very long time. It’s good to have him home.