The Cabinet Maker

 

 

THE CABINET MAKER

by

TOM DURKIN

 

 

No one could remember when Thornton moved in or how long he lived in the basement apartment on the east side of Broadway before he put up the sign: Thornton-Cabinet Maker. But one day there it was, and a week or so later I watched from the street level as he built a chest of drawers in the little shop across the airway from his living quarters.

I was in the seventh grade at St. Joseph’s, delivering orders after school for Davie’s grocery store, and Thornton’s shop was along my delivery route. When I passed his shop, I often stopped to watch him work and marveled at the things he could do with wood.

About the middle of May that year, Thornton posted a notice on the bulletin board at the drug store across the street from where I worked. He needed a part-time summer helper. If I got the job, I figured, I wouldn’t have to climb all those flights of stairs delivering groceries in the heat of July and August.

I spoke to Thornton on my next delivery run. He recognized me from the many times I had stopped to watch him work through the window and since I looked strong enough to do what he had in mind, he hired me to start the Monday after school closed in June. Thrilled with my news, I raced home to tell my mother.

“You know nothing about tools and building things, Brian,” my mother said when I told her about the job “and we’re not raising you to be a woodworker’s helper. Besides, I’m sure that work shop of his is a dangerous place for a boy your age.”

I explained that the job involved keeping the work area free of scrap wood, sweeping up sawdust and wood shavings, and helping Thornton position and move the furniture.

“I’ll have every weekend off this summer,” I continued, “and I’ll be finished at one o’clock in the afternoon. The pay will work out the same as I’m making now with the tips, and I won’t have all those stairs to climb, and all that walking to do in the heat.”

My mother’s mind was made up and that’s all there was to it. She refused to discuss it any further until my father came home from work.

When I brought the subject up after dinner, I explained to my father the work the job entailed and why I would rather work for the cabinet maker than spend my summer climbing stairs with boxes of groceries all day.

“I think Brian might be better off at Thornton’s than at Davie’s,” my father told my mother when he heard what both of us had to say. And in one of the few times I can remember growing up, I heard my father disagree with my mother.

“After all, Grace,” he said, “I don’t think there is much more the boy can learn delivering groceries.”

Thornton took time the first day to explain about the many tools he used, and where the tools and materials were kept. Tools needing sharpening were left on a table in the store room, and Thornton worked on them at the end of the day before he returned them to their places in the tool rack. The other tools I was to put back in the rack as soon as he finished with them.

The job turned out to be far more interesting than I expected, and I went home that first afternoon to tell my mother about it, hoping to win her belated approval.

“That’s nice, Brian,” she said. “And in case you forgot, you did not make your bed this morning. Why don’t you go and do it now?”

It was strange for my mother not to show an interest in what I was doing and I didn’t like it. I knew she wasn’t pleased with my working at Thornton’s, but after this first response, I wondered if she would ever talk to me again.

That evening, I told my father how my mother reacted and asked why it was she wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to tell her about my job.

“Your mother is upset with me,” my father said, “and she needs time to get over it.

“She’s a proud woman, Brian,” he added, “and she’s hurt because I disagreed with her about your working with the cabinet maker.”

“It was especially hurtful that I disagreed with her in the presence of her son,” he said. “I was wrong to cross her with you standing there and I’ve told her I am sorry for that. Give her the time she needs.”

I hoped he was right.

When friends of Thornton visited the shop, our work stopped for as long as they stayed. I used these times to replace the tools Thornton used that morning and to think up questions to ask later him later when the opportunity arose.

Thornton had tools I never knew existed. The hand-held crosscut and rip saws, and the jack plane, were seldom used in the shop, while the dovetail saw and the smooth plane might make several round trips in a morning. The table and radial saws and the power plane, all new and fascinating, were usually used at the beginning of a project to cut and shape the pieces to their rough size. My questions were endless, and Thornton always took the time to answer my questions.

Thornton was the most talkative man I had met up to that point in my life. A single word could to get him started, and we talked endlessly as he worked. Thornton would stop speaking in the middle of a sentence, though, at a critical point in the work, and then resume what he was saying, exactly where he left off, when that part of the job was completed. These sudden silences were periods of concentration for him and, I learned, were not to be violated by my asking questions.

Working with Thornton was the most interesting thing I had ever done, and it bothered me that I was unable to tell my mother about what I was learning because she didn’t want to listen.

I told Thornton during one of our conversations, how my mother felt about my working for him, and that she didn’t want to hear me tell her about my job.

“Show her what you’re doing instead of telling her,” he said, “maybe if she sees what you can do now that you couldn’t do before, it might help.”

“Let’s take some time each day when you’re finished straightening up, to work on a project that will show your mother what you are learning.”

I went for a walk with my father to Riverside Park that evening and we talked about Thornton’s proposal.

“Mr. Thornton is willing to help me do it if I can come up with an idea of something to build,” I said. “Can you think of something I could make for her?”

“Your mother’s not one for owning more than she needs, Brian,” he said, “so I’d keep it small and useful if I were you. Give me time to think about it and let’s see what I come up with.”

A few days later, one one of our walks, my father suggested that a jewelry box my mother could keep on her dresser might be useful to her.

“Not that she has any jewelry she want’s to store, mind you, but she’s always putting small things in safe places and then forgetting where she puts them,” he said.

Thornton thought the jewelry box was a great idea.

“Let’s draw a plan first,” he said, “and we’ll figure what woods we’ll need. A good workman thinks about what he wants to do and how he’s going to do it before he takes the first tool in hand.”

It would have been easy for Thornton to design the box for me and then build it, but that is not what he had in mind. We sketched out a box twelve inches long, eight inches wide and four inches deep with a hinged lid and a compartmented drawer insert. Thornton suggested we make it out of a thin walnut stock he had that would be easier for me to work by hand. When we finished the planning, he said he would help me with the box for one-half hour each day after my work.

I was eager to make the jewelry box and leaped into the project that afternoon with my usual enthusiasm after my shop work was finished. In my rush to begin, I misalligned the dovetail cuts for the lid, ruined the wood, and had to start all over.

“Sometimes it is better to take a piece of scrap and work on it,” Thornton told me when he saw my mistake. “You try different ways to solve a problem, looking for the one way that will most closely meet the needs of the work you have at hand.”

The next day, as he was completing the assembly of a chest of drawers, Thornton said: “Work is capable of affording a special dignity to the workman.

“If you approach every aspect of what you do as being part of something worthwhile and of enduring value,” he said as he fitted the largest of the chest’s five drawers into place, “you put more of yourself into the workpiece and it will show.”

“No two individuals bring exactly the same ideas and talents to the workbench, and this can be seen in the finished product.”

As I listened, I dawned on me that Thornton was telling me, in his own gentle way, how I should approach making my jewelry box, and what he expected of me.

During the almost two months I worked with Thornton he made six chests of drawers, a kneehole desk and a cabinet he called a press. My apprenticeship came to an end half way through August when my father took his vacation and our family went off for two weeks to the Catskill Mountains.

I was sorry to see the summer wind down, not because it meant it was almost time to go back to school. I liked school, and I was looking forward to starting the eighth grade. It was because my summer job as Thornton’s helper was ending.

With Thornton’s guidance, I completed the jewelry box my last week of work and Thornton carved the initials–GMD–neatly in the center of the lid. I was very proud of what I had done and my pride was unmistakable when I presented the box to my mother.

“What is this,” she asked as I handed her the box, “and where did you get it?”

“It’s a jewelry box for your dresser and I made it for you,” I replied.

“I worked on it every day after my regular job and now you have a safe place for your little things and it will be easy for you to remember where you put them.”

My mother examined the box closely inside and out. She ran her fingers over the smooth finish of the dark walnut and the recesses that were her initials. When she turned the box over, she saw where I had carved my initials and the year on the bottom of the box, just as I had seen Thornton do with every piece he made.

“It’s beautiful, Brian,” my mother said, “and thank you for making it for me. No one has ever made a gift for me before and I don’t know what to say.

“I’ll always treasure this box,” she said as she hugged me. “Maybe working at the cabinet maker wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”

 

THE END