Just Whittlin’ the Time Away…

 

Isn’t life wonderful

Isn’t life gay

Isn’t life the perfect thing

To pass the time away

     Mason Williams

I’m not a project man. Let that be known from the start. I’m envious of those who are. An acquaintance of mine reroofed an entire barn over the course of a summer. A former Valley neighbor built a gazebo one summer, an outdoor brick barbeque the next. Jim Cabe built an impressive two story shop and went on to construct a quaint garden shed for Alice. My brother singled handedly built a pole shed on his forty acres down in Orting, then a work shed, and is now remodeling a house on the property. Six years total it took me to build a grape arbor, woodshed, and simple carport—approximately two years per project. Thirty-eight years on the place and yet no garden shed. A dollhouse I started when my daughter was eight or nine (she’s now thirty-four) still sits unfinished in the shed, a tenement for mice, and now a longstanding family joke. The fact I have a grandson relieves what little pressure I ever felt to complete the project. No, I guess I’m what you’d call a putterer; in fact, my brothers have fashioned the word into a nickname for me.

Years ago I was thumbing through a book on American folk art. Among the photos of cornhusk dolls, hand woven baskets, willow whistles, wooden bowls, quilts and other backwoods objects d’art I discovered a small, but fascinating piece of whittling: a monkey carved from the pit of a peach. From time to time I thought about that peach pit monkey, especially during canning season when I’d remove the skins and pits from the boxful of peaches I was preparing to preserve and told myself, “One day I’m going to whittle me a peach pit monkey.” So I started saving peach pits, the large ones from late season peaches, ran them through the dishwasher, and stored them on the mantel behind the woodstove to dry.

Those were the days before there was a computer in our household; I couldn’t remember where I’d seen the picture of the carved pit. Al Gore had yet to invent the internet; You Tube did not exist: I had no access to instructional videos on peach pit carving. But I did know what a monkey looked like…and I had plenty of raw material from which to draw. My Old Timer jackknife, the only thing I’ve ever won in my life--a punchboard prize from my tavern days of long ago—had been around many a block of wood. I honed it razor sharp, selected a promising pit from my inventory, and began my monkey business.

Aside from the fact you’re carving away with a very sharp tool in and around your fingertips (as a precaution I carried a band-aid in my wallet) on a small object, a peach pit isn’t a bad carving medium. The pit has no grain, so you don’t have to worry about gouging or splintering your project. If you are so inclined to monkey around a bit, here are some tips for the wannabe pit carver: choose a nice, plump pit, one that’s not too deeply scoured. If the pit is too  deeply“pitted,” the wood  may not be thick enough to fashion the legs without their splitting. I first use a red pencil to sketch out the head and legs. Once the limbs are roughed out, it’s a matter of whittling through to the center of the pit. Then flip the pit over and repeat the procedure on the reverse side. The most challenging steps in the process are cutting away the wood between the arms and head and between the hind legs and the tail. Take care to leave just enough tail material for a stub between the monkey’s front paws.

The nice thing about peach pit art is it’s conveniently portable: pit, jackknife, and whetstone take up little space in your pocket. Then in those unproductive idle moments…when the wife is shopping for shoes or purses…when you’re sitting in a “much ado about nothing” faculty meeting, slip the project out of your pocket and begin whittling discretely away. A peach pit carving session produces little “sawdust”; that which is generated is easily brushed away. No piles of shavings with this project.

To date I have notched seven pit monkeys. My first attempt bears a striking resemblance to E.T., the Extraterrestrial, but now that I think about it, E.T. did have a certain simian look about him. For weeks I carried the finished product  in my pocket, occasionally pressing it between fingers and palm to finish the wood with the oil from my hand. After browsing through several antique stores, I finally found a suitable bell jar to display my “first born.”

 

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a project man. But I am a putterer,  and so in peach pit art I decided to render the classic monkey trio: “Hear no evil; speak no evil; see no evil” at the rate of one per year. Each of the three senses had its special challenges, but now all three rest tail first on a miniature log in a bell jar built for three.

If you yearn to be a true peach pit artist, here’s a word to the wise: serious whittlers of folk art shun power tools; Dremel power units are off limits. If  the project’s not whittled with a jackknife (won or purchased…makes no difference), it hardly qualifies as “folk art,” in my opinion. Peach pit carving, I admit, is intricate work, an exercise in patience and digital dexterity (not to mention potential bloodshed), but turning the center of a peach into a tail-grasping monkey isn’t really all that difficult. All you have to do is carve away the part of the pit that doesn’t look like a monkey.

A Place for Everything; Everything in its Place...

We were only separated two days, but I thought about you hour on the hour, even awoke in the night wondering--and worrying where you were. Previously I've always known that after a short search you'd turn up safe. Your recent disappearance, however, made me fear I'd lost you forever.

Until your latest vanishing we were inseparable, remarkable for a relationship that began decades ago...and in a tavern no less. I gambled, "Old Timer," and you were my prize--in fact the first thing I'd ever won in my life. The middleman in our relationship in those days long before lottery kiosks or scratch tickets were "just a gleam in the eye" of the State's general fund was a tavern punch board. I took a chance on you, old friend, sprung for one dollar, if memory serves. I paid the bartender, chose a remaining chance, and punched out a tiny scroll of paper. The number on the strip I unraveled was among the winning numbers listed on the board. When I presented the scrap of paper to the bartender, he said "Hummmph," turned and rummaged around on the cluttered shelves, budged a huge jar of pickled eggs to one side, and hauled you out. I can't remember if you came to me bare naked or in a box, but there you were heavy in my hand, a single bladed "jack" knife, "pocket" knife, "toad stabber"...and ever since you and I have been companions. "I'll give you five bucks for it," the barman offered. I smiled, shook my head and slipped you into my jeans pocket, your second home all these years. When not in my company, you reside in the top drawer of my writing desk. But of late I've gotten careless, taking to leaving you lying about the house just about anywhere. And so now you're lost.

We've spent hours, you and I, whittling away sliver after sliver until the wood shaped the way we wanted. You have slivered off the silver to fashion rings from silver dimes, carved a wizard's face into a peach pit half for a Boy Scout's neckerchief slide, peeled and fashioned the crotch from a willow tree into a slingshot. And let's not forget the countless yards of cardboard you've sliced for recycling purposes.

Over the years we have shaved wood into balls, carved an alder peace symbol, whittled away propellers on a stick (hand launched helicopters).

To date we have carved six and a half peach pit monkeys, quite a challenge for man and jackknife (no Dremel tools for us purists). In fact you were the unnamed principal in a previous Ripple post ("Just Whittlin' the Time Away").

At our family reunions you and I won every game of Stretch (Mumbley Peg) forcing one brother after another to do the splits until they nearly sprung their crotches. "Wanna use my knife?" I'd offer at gift opening occasions where you sliced through tape and wrapping paper with ease and scalpel-like precision. You have had so many sessions with the whetstone your thin blade has been ground concave. Slightly sprung from years of use, your blade no longer neatly folds into the handle bay, and these days I reach into my jeans' pocket gingerly lest I prick a finger in seeking you out. And, yes, you have drawn blood over the years, Old Timer---but mine only, the fault never yours. Always a careless slip of the hand or flagrant disregard of the woodcarver's adage: "Always whittle away from yourself." Whenever we began another peach pit monkey project, I thought to carry a couple band-aids in my wallet in case a random slip of your blade sliced a finger (not so much to staunch a wound but to avoid staining the project).

An article in The New Yorker magazine about missing or misplaced items stated that roughly six months of our lives are spent searching for things lost. Not only do we spend time actively searching for whatever's missing, but between these questing forays, we mentally rehash seek and rescue scenarios: "When and for what purpose did I last use the item? "When and where did I last have or see the item?" "Where have I found the lost item before?" And throughout the day (or waking hours of the night) these are the questions you ponder. All this I did and more. My biggest fear was you were now rusting away in the backyard grass somewhere only to be found by the riding lawnmower this spring. Perhaps you slipped from the pocket of my sweats or shirt? Seems to me I'd have heard a thump when you hit the ground. Regardless, I traced my last whereabouts outdoors--not just once but several times. Except for the exercise my search was futile.

I lost a paring knife several years ago. While turning the compost heap a year or two back, the little knife, much of its wooden handle rotted away, showed up in a spadeful of cured compost. I had long since forgotten about it. Our late neighbor Tina Streutker found a missing diamond ring in her compost heap. She figured it had slipped off her finger and was swept up in the vacuum during a routine carpet cleaning. She was in the habit of emptying the cleaner bag in the compost pile and gardener that she was, what she lost, she found sparkling away in shovelful of compost.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude offered this reasonable explanation of how things come to be lost:

"...every member of the family, without realizing it, repeated the same path every day, the same actions, and repeated the same words at the same time. Only when they deviated from meticulous routine did they run the risk of losing something....Fernanda, on the other hand looked for [her wedding ring] in vain along the paths of her every day itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them...."

The other day it rained, one of those late fall gully washers that overwhelmed the gutters and sent me rushing for a raincoat and ladder to unplug a couple clogged downspouts. When I set them to gushing again, I returned to the garage where I shed the raincoat, draped it over the riding mower to drain, and in the process of spreading out the sleeves, I spied something on the flat surface of the engine's recoil starter. And there you were, Old Timer, lying there forlorn, blade fully extended as if to say, "Whenever you find me, I'm at your service." A joyful reunion...and mystery solved: I had placed you there after you pried the dried cheese from the mousetrap bait plate which I needed to refresh with fresh cheddar. I reset the trap and went about my business, which a few short hours later became a preoccupation over your disappearance...wondering where you were and if I'd ever find you again.