Kitchen Table

As you all know, I am a Southeast Iowa boy, born and raised.  I am not a farm kid, but rather, grew up in town. A wonderful community - Sigourney - the county seat of Keokuk County. That's kind of a big deal for towns in Iowa.

I spent the bulk of my life in two houses; the house that I lived in, and my grandparent's house. Although there were many differences between the houses, there was one thing that was very similar. The kitchen was the center of the house and the kitchen table was the center of the kitchen. so, in odd ways, there were a couple of kitchen tables that were the centers of my universe growing up.

Like many places where we spend time in our lives, kitchen tables had rules that had to be recognized and honored. There was a seating chart, although never discussed or written down. There was an aging process that let you have more access and authority at the table as you grew older and hopefully wiser. But no matter what your social lot at the table it was the place to be. At that table decisions were made and any information to be shared with others arrived there first.

I remember a Saturday morning at my grandparents home when the table was truly the center of everything. Grandpa and Grandma had bought an Appaloosa foal from some people in Minnesota when they'd visited family up there. Midnight Surprise was one of the prettiest horses that I'd ever seen. She also had a wonderful disposition. Grandpa put a lot of time and energy into training her and by the morning that I am remembering, she had been around for a year or so. 

Some people were interested in buying Surprise and they had come that morning to work out the deal. There were a couple of sessions of coffee at the kitchen table, and in between those, they spent time out looking at Surprise. As guests, the potential buyers were given room at the table and those of us who were typically there were pushed to the far side of the counter. But even with that, we got to watch. As the morning progressed, it became obvious that there would be a sale. The potential buyers wanted Surprise, and my grandfather never owned a horse that he wouldn't sell for the right price. That morning, the right price was a thousand dollars. In a time where you could go to the sale barn and buy a good pony for fifty or sixty dollars, this was huge, and it all played out, right there in front of us. Years later, my grandmother had told me that the sale of Surprise was the first time that they had ever had a savings account. This was a moment in time where many things changed.  It all happened around the kitchen table.

The kitchen table in my house was multi-faceted, but was again the center of the house. It could be a place to have dinner and talk about the day, a place to play cards with friends on a Saturday night, or a place to do homework and projects. It was all of these things. It was also the place where you knew trouble was coming your way if you were summoned there. Of course, you always knew that was the case because you were called by your entire name - first, middle, and last. This was the kitchen table that I grew up around, and if you asked my kids, was probably very similar to the one that they grew up around. I'm confident that they grew tired of the question, "What was the best part of your day?"

I think part of what we struggle with today is that we have lost the concept of the kitchen table. Watch people when you are out and about. How many times do you see two people in a restaurant at a table together, both on their mobile device. Walk across a college campus. Everyone is in their own world. Talk to friends about what dinner time looks at in the home today. Does it involve ear buds? This is just the little corner of the world that we can see. The time was that our leaders would get together and talk. I am just not sure that is the case anymore.

In the last week or so, I actually talked with someone that told me the goal of a conversation today is to figure out what you are going to say next, rather than engage in a dialogue. Have we come to a time when it is mostly two people talking at each other, not talking together? 

This is why we need kitchen tables. In our house, when company arrives, we still have a tendency to sit at the kitchen table and just talk. It's a great way to share ideas and come up with plans. 

I wonder if this would help some of the rhetoric that we hear today? Could it help if people could sit down in a comfortable, safe place, get to know each other, and talk?  What do you think?

DNA

I remember when my daughter got old enough to start asking about where characteristics like red hair and blue eyes came from. There was a little concern about what her next questions would be, but thankfully those didn't come for a while. It seems like in the past few years, DNA has become more and more important in  many ways.  It's used to determine guilt and innocence, and to reverse court cases that were decided years earlier.  Now, you can even pay to determine your geographical makeup based upon your DNA. More and more screening that is happening based on parents, and I'm not necessarily sure that all of the decisions that we make with this new information are decisions that we should make, but that's for another discussion.

What I'm really thinking about today is whether the basic building blocks that make us who we are also determine how we behave. This comes back to the Nature vs Nurture argument and although many really intelligent people have talked to me about this, I've never landed clearly on exactly what I believe. I have a couple of examples here that give me a moment to stop and think, and I wonder if they will for you.

I was a Senior in high school, a long long time ago. If you remember my house, we had parking for two cars on the top level, just outside the kitchen door. This was the door that everyone we knew came and went from that house. Anyway, on this particular evening, my mother and friends were sitting on the patio, just talking. I came home, parked in the parking place furthest from the house and came up to join the group. Some time later, my sister, Jaye, came home and parked in the place closest to the house.  When she came through the gate in the fence, everyone started laughing. Neither Jaye nor I knew what this was about, but we quickly came to learn that as we had each gotten out of the car, the things that we had done and the mannerisms we employed had been identical. Was this in the DNA, or just because we had lived around each other for so long?  I'm not sure, but I do know that if you call me a friend, and you meet my sister somewhere else, you will quickly recognize that we are related. Yes, there is a family resemblance, but more than that, the mannerisms that we both have are very similar. I don't know if genetics go to that level.

Okay, second example. My grandfather drove a truck for Keokuk County, helping to maintain the county roads. To say that he knew all of the roads in the county was a big understatement. On top of this, he loved to drive around on Sunday and see what was going on in the county, or see where he thought that his crew should work the next week. This was always an "everyone in the car" type of event and we covered many, many miles in an afternoon without ever leaving the county. This was always enjoyable as we learned a lot. But the part that makes me wonder about basic proclivities had to do not with the trip, but with his house and barn. Almost without exception, as we headed out for one of these excursions, Grandpa would ask if the barn door was closed. As many times as not, we would turn around and go back to check. Of course, it got to the point that Jaye and I would just go check before we even got in the car.

The interesting point here is not about my grandfather, it is about me. Obviously, I don't have a barn door to worry about, but, I do have a garage door. And although the two items don't seem much alike, and I should be able to sit in front of the house and know if I closed the garage door, it is amazing how many times I get a few blocks from the house and wonder if I closed it.  We live in a cul-de-sac, and I'm sure that I have neighbors who think I am crazy as they see me leave one direction, and in a few minutes come back from the other direction, drive by, and leave again.  Okay, when I say it, it even seems a little crazy to me.

So, I guess that I am really wondering, if the family heritage that we have affects our hair and eye color and things of that sort, or does it mold the way that we think? Maybe this is part of the reason that many of us reach the point where we say out loud that we are becoming our parents. Maybe we never had a choice and this was just the way that it was going to be. 

Oh my ...

Practice

Some time ago, I shared with you that I had been given a great opportunity to work on a project I referred to as "Top Secret."  This Saturday I will turn the project over to the family members that I am hopeful will have this in their family for generations to come. I actually think this is their expectation too, so I'm not suggesting something here that isn't in the realm of reality.  As wonderful as that is, and yes, I will post pictures so that you know what I've been working on, but that isn't what I'm thinking about today.

I have the privilege to be acquainted with Dan Keller, the owner of RCS Millwork. I initially met Dan through Rotary, and grew to know him through Meals for the Heartland, but I really came to appreciate him when I was between careers. Dan was one of my most regular and vocal supporters. Part of this was that Dan had also gone through a career search at one point in his life, and part of it was that we share a love of woodworking - Dan as his vocation, and myself as an avocation. 

When we first met, I was just setting up the Toybox. Now, as I look back, I'd have to say that many of my woodworking skills were rudimentary. I knew what I was doing, but many things took lots of time and several "test pieces" before everything worked the way that I wanted it to. In one conversation I had with Dan, he  told me that if I wanted to be a better woodworker, I needed to practice more. Well, there was a earth shattering thought. I know that it was nothing new, in fact it's an imperative for anyone that wants to improve those things that they do.  But, for whatever reason, it came at a moment in time and found fertile ground in me. Those words and my response have caused me to work to improve basic skills and to continue to add additional skills in the last several years. I'm not about to say that I am ready for hand carved panels, or pieces with a lot of curves, but there are skills that I have added that make my woodworking much more special than it used to be. I hope to have the chance to show this off in the set of kitchen cabinets that I will be working on for my home in the near future.

In talking to others (not necessarily woodworkers) who have skills and talents that they bring to bear, and in comparing notes, we all seem to continue to discover the same thing. The more we do something, and actually the more that we screw things up, the more we learn and the better our skills become as we move forward.

I once read that in the scientific community, many of the biggest discoveries happen with scientists who are still in the first half of their career. I remember thinking that this seemed unusual. I would have thought that over the entire scope of their lives, they would continue to know more and discover more, i.e. more practice would lead to more and bigger discoveries. This disconnect made me consider a few things. I wonder if, at our foundation, we often stop practicing the skills we've achieved throughout our lives and professions on a regular basis. Without this continued practice, we have a tendency to fall into the trap of "regular," no longer creative and special.  I think back to the people I worked with at Drake and many others since then. We talked about the importance of being lifetime learners. Maybe what we were talking about was being a lifetime practicer. Maybe we all should consider our need to continue practicing as much as we did in our early days in every aspect of our lives.

So there are some parts of my life that I have continued to practice on regularly and some that I have let get a little stagnant. Probably time to rethink some of that. Some of it may be fine, but there are probably a couple of things that I should practice again.

How about you? And on top of that, what about adding something new that you've never tried before? 

I am working right now toward adding the capability of doing CNC routing and engraving to my shop.  Of course I am concerned about spending the money, but even more overwhelming is thinking about working with a new tool that I have no knowledge about, and a new software that drives the tool. I know that I have work to do there, and I'm quite sure that I will create pieces that don't come out perfectly and will become tinder for damp fires. I'm happy that I found a great source to get rid of cut off chunks and pieces too small to make anything out of. 

Anyway, looks like more practice of several things in my future. 

I hope that you all had a great holiday celebrating our nation's birthday, and are working to get back to your regular lives. Unless you are still on vacation. Have a good week.

Storm Clouds

Most nights of the week, I go to the gym about eight o'clock. On a typical evening I'm there between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on the level of commitment I'm feeling. That usually puts me back home between nine and nine-thirty. Last evening was far from typical, at it allowed me to knock another thing off my bucket list. Most interestingly, it wasn't even something I ever thought was on the list.

If you aren't from around here, or, if you didn't see the news about this area today, you may not know that we had a “Rain Event” last night. Depending on the report that you use, you could argue that we had between 7-10 inches of rain in 2-3 hours. It overwhelmed all the infrastructure that was built to take care of rain.

Now, I had always believed that when someone talked about flash flooding, it was something that happened in the low spot that looked like an old river bed, a natural draining point when there was more rain than the regular streams and rivers could take. Last night, I discovered how inaccurate that thought was. 

When I finished working out, I waited for a break in the weather to get to the truck. I thought the biggest issue I had to deal with was getting wet. I headed home by my regular route. Toward the bottom of a long shallow hill, I realized that I was in relatively deep water. I decided to make a move for the local Kum and Go, cutting into the parking lot with water rolling over the hood of my truck. I was fortunate to remember one of those weird things that someone taught me when I was young: of you're in deep water, drive with both feet keeping the RPMs of the vehicle up so that the water doesn't stop the engine. Glad I listened that day.

Anyway, I got into the Kum & Go which was high and dry and decided this was my place to sit and wait. Before long, the power in went off, making the whole thing feel just a little stranger. Over time, I came to a couple of realizations. First, I knew that the rain was slowing and that large amounts of water would start to find ways to get to the regular places that drained water away. Second, I was relatively sure that I wouldn't be able to get home by my regular route. Knowing this, I reversed course and headed for the Interstate, thinking that I should be able to get around all of this and get home from the other direction.

That thought process made perfect sense at the time, but I was so wrong! About halfway between two exits, the one I used to enter and the one I was going to use exit, we came to a stop. Now, be clear; I don't mean that we slowed down, I mean that we came to a stop. Apparently, in Altoona there were some 50 cars inundated on the Interstate and traffic had backed all the way to where I sat on the western edge of Des Moines. Not only that, but all the off ramps in between were under water. So, we just sat.

After an hour, or so, we did something that I thought I would never do (here is the Bucket list moment), drivers (including me) turned around on the Interstate and drove back up the shoulder to work our way off the on ramp where I had begun this entire mess. I ended up at the Toybox, where things were high and dry. After waiting  for another hour or so, I finally made my way home. At that point, it was sometime after midnight.

As I looked around today, both in the media and by driving the neighborhood, I recognized my great fortune. We had at least one lost life in the water last night and the number of vehicles that are damaged or destroyed is simply amazing. I have heard it said that fire and water are unrelenting, and I know that I have a much healthier respect for the power of moving water after some of the things that I saw last evening.

We sometimes fail to remember how frail we can be when facing the full force of nature. It is important that we all remember this and make sure that we take every precaution possible. I will tell you for sure, I will be looking at the weather app before I head for the gym on any evening when storm clouds threaten.

I hope you all have a great Fourth of July celebration.

Hair on Fire

I am not sure about you, but this is the time of the year I feel as though I'm running around with my hair on fire. Whether or not this is a real expression for how busy you are, it's always been part of my life. Of course there are always things that you are busy with in your work world, but at this time of the year, you layer all of the family get-togethers and holiday preparations on top of that to create complete chaos. That actually reminds me that although I have my Christmas letter written, it doesn't count if I don't send it out. Like last year. I wrote a great letter that never went anywhere. 

At the moment, the real thrust of what I'm thinking about are the large number of projects needing to be accomplished in the shop. I will try to capture all of them here.

* Jaye's teardrop trailer - I have virtually all of the interior work done on the trailer now. All that remains (I make myself laugh) is to complete the outside work. I'm going to cover the outside with birdseye maple veneer and several coats of marine varnish. Then I will finish the doors and the aluminum trim.
* Sara's kitchen - After finally coming to agreement on what the new kitchen should look like, it's now time to build. I am quite excited about it, but there are in excess of 800 parts that need to be roughed out, cut to final size, assembled and finished. Honestly, in order to even think about finishing the kitchen cabinets, I need to get the trailer out the door.
* Barrister's book case #1 - Made from quartered white oak. This is for the guest room and will match the rest of the furniture I've built.  This is a Christmas gift for Sara, so don't tell her about it.
* Barristers's book case #2 - Made from white maple. This is for my office at work because it seems ridiculous that I have an office with Sauder particleboard furniture in it.  It was imperative that I correct this and since I was making one set, the second is pretty easy.
* Several cutting boards - Typically during the holiday season, I have situations come up where people that I know and love need gifts quickly either for gifting, or in some cases as "door prizes" for various organizations. I try to be ready to help.
* Etsy - This isn't woodworking, but it is something that I need to return to. I need to show the world some of the things I am working on, and see if it sparks interest.  You never know when one project will lead to an idea in someone else. These times that we live in, Etsy and Pinterest are great places for this kind of iterative thinking.  Take an idea, tweak it a little, you have a whole new thing.
* Top secret - At Thanksgiving I was asked to be involved in a woodworking project that is quite exciting, but I can't tell you about yet.  More to come on this one.

Those are the things I have going at the moment, along with all of the activities that come as a part of the holidays.  I know that the things that come out of the shop are well thought of and are often items that will remain in families for years.  This makes me smile and makes me very proud of what I do.

I would love to know what you are doing around the Christmas season. Are you working on projects that will make another smile? Send me  pictures or comments if you have a chance. The amount of talent that exists in the crafting/building community is amazing.

One last thing. I want to say a special Hello to a woodworker in Dade County, Florida. I don't know who you are, but I know that in the last while you were in a class taught by my cousin Jan. Yes, in fact, she is my cousin. We grew up together riding bikes and laughing through our summers, and I miss her. I was informed through the family grapevine that you and she had met in a class in Florida and that you had been skeptical that I was actually Jan's cousin. Track me down and say Hi. I would love to know more about your woodworking.

By the way, have I mentioned to you how incredibly small the world can be?  Reach out and find a new friend or another woodworker.

Am I Square With You?

I grew up in a small community in Southeast Iowa. As a county seat, the community was important. One thing I learned while growing up in Sigourney was how that community of people took care of each other.

The person I am thinking about today was a developmentally challenged gentleman who lived in town. If I remember right, his name was Thollie. Now, had he lived in a larger town or city, he probably would have ended up as one of the homeless living on the street, or maybe in some type of institution. In Sigourney, though, he had a place to live and a whole group of people who looked out for him.

If you ever spent time with this man, the last thing he would ask before leaving you was, "Am I square with you?" The question was important to him, as was your answer. He would wait for you to respond.  He didn't want to feel as though he had ever shorted anyone in the dealings he had with them. It was almost as though he realized how fortunate he was to live in this type of environment.

As I look back, I realize just how blessed I was to live there too, but I was less likely to notice it. It is amazing to think about how many times people helped me out because we were part of the same community. It would have been just as easy to have fallen to the other side of the equation and been very harsh. One April when I was in college, I ran into Rob Marget. I knew I was overdrawn at his bank, actually by several hundred dollars. All Rob asked me was if I had summer employment and would I get the bank paid back when I had that job. No overdraft charges, no penalties, and no interest for what was actually a loan. He just wanted to make sure that in the end, we would be all right, that we would we be square. This was my experience living in that small town and I know that others had similar experiences.

I laugh at some of the students I went to school with at Drake. Generally, the student body at Drake came from a different economic status than I did. They were much more likely to have arrived in brand new cars and an allowance that was far beyond my family's means. From everything that I could tell, they lived in communities more like the one I live in today (Des Moines) than the one I grew up in. But as an undergrad, in a time where everything was quite surreal, these same students LOVED the cheese I brought from home for grilled cheese sandwiches on Sunday nights when the dining hall was closed. For those of you that haven't already made the intellectual jump, this cheese was square, came in about a three pound block and was part of the surplus food items available to families under a certain income level. Yup, my friends just loved the government surplus cheese. Again, though, it was a way my community took care of me and the people I surrounded myself with, even into my college years.

About two years ago, I started spending time in Neola, Iowa, where my company has a facility. It was the first time in years that I had been in a community that small. Sure enough, as I got to know the people in town I discovered there was a gentleman there much like the Thollie I had known at home. The community has things they ask him to do to keep him busy and out of trouble, and everyone looks out for him and takes care of him.

I absolutely know and believe this happens in larger communities as well, but I think it's harder to see. I knew Thollie well while living  in Sigourney. He was part of the community and involved in my daily life. You would literally see him everywhere and he went out of his way to wave or say hello. Where I live now, someone like him could live only blocks from me and I wouldn't know them. For heavens sake, I have a cousin that lived a short distance from me and it took a while to figure that out.

I'm not sure how I can be better at recognizing people who might need my help and then figure out how to help them, but in today's world, it seems more important than ever.

Okay, there is my personal challenge for the day. And  you have all heard it. We will see what can be done. Then, when all is said and done, I want to make sure that whoever I have dealt with, I am square with them.

Preparation

I spent the first part of my adulthood working for a company named Payless Cashways. The company is long gone at this point, but the people continue on. This morning in a post on Facebook, Scott F posted a note which really made me think. He posted a picture of his name tag from back then and said, "Just ran across this, made me realize how many great people I met through the years at a once dominant powerhouse in the industry. Never realized I was being groomed to potentially be a goal-oriented person with many traits from many people I was fortunate enough to work with along this crazy journey."

I thought about this all day. In every encounter we have in a lifetime, good or bad, we take something from the moment. I agree with Scott. Much of who I am today was shaped by the leadership of that company so many long years ago.  I know the way I look at expenses in a business and the relationship between expense and profit is one really solid example. We were all taught early-on how to manage in plentiful times and in times that were not. We didn't succeed in the long run, but I know we kept the company alive a lot longer because of the things those who had come before us taught along the way.

So I ask myself - what am I teaching today? Am I providing good lessons to others that will help them in the future to move lives and businesses along? I hope I am. I know the biggest thing any of us can do is to help the next generation to learn from the past. Not only did Payless do this for me, but my family also believed strongly in this virtue.  I remember walking around the cemetery with my grandmother as she talked endlessly about family that had come before and what they had done and how they changed things for the better. Of course I wish I had listened more at the time, but I did absorb a lot of it, and it has helped make me a more fully rounded person today. So again, back to the question - how am I helping the next group to be more ready than I was?

One of the things I have recognized in the last year or so is just how cyclical the world is. I know this is not new information, but sometimes it just takes time to totally get it. When I was in my teens in the late sixties and seventies, I really couldn't understand why my parent's generation didn't understand the way I looked at things. I also remember thinking I was sure I would never be that way. Fast forward three or four decades, and sure enough, I look at the people coming into the workforce and I think their approach is crazy. If I really stop and think about it, this generation's approach to this decade is no different than mine was to my parent's time. It is just different. And, with this, I have probably gotten a little more set in my ways and less likely to be as open to new thoughts and new ways of thinking. There, I said it.

So Scott, here comes the challenge to both of us, and probably a bunch of others too. The next time we find ourselves in a conversation where we want to tell the other person they are "just crazy" in the way  they are looking at something, we have to stop. We need to think of all of those people that took time and invested energy into each of us to make us better and more fully rounded, and we need to move that forward. We need to stop and listen and work to understand what is being said and why. Then we need to work to find middle ground and work with this next generation to help them to be more prepared than they are now. We need to do this to honor the time and energy that others spent on us when we were still feeling our way. I know that there were things I did and said in those times that I probably should not have been forgiven for, but I was, so I could move forward.  Let's find people that we can help in the same way.