My Father The Artist

For many years my father worked for the Standard Shade Roller Company.  The company manufactured rollers for window shades as the name implies.  My father’s job was to fuel the boilers used for heat to kiln dry the wood used in the rollers.

Dad worked 12 hour shifts three nights a week as well as a 14 hour shift all day Sunday for a total of 50 hours a week.  Normally the company operated on an 8 hour day meaning my father was never there when the company was manufacturing their product.  In fact he and an old night watchman named Bill Reader were the only two people on the premises most of the time.

There were time clocks located sporadically around and among the various buildings making up the complex.  Bill  had to make his rounds once an hour.  As he came to each clock he was required to punch in to prove he had been there.  It took him about 45 minutes each hour to make his rounds.  A few minutes was spent in conversation with my father each hour.  Hour after long hour this repetitious routine continued, day after day, for many years.

Most of these tedious hours my father spent alone surrounded by several large furnaces that turned water into steam.  The steam was piped to radiators drying the wood used in the roller manufacturing process.  Early in his shift each day he had the day’s supply of scrap wood and wooden parts to burn.  This required nearly steady shoveling into one of the boilers or another, but after the scrap was gone coal was used.  This extended the time required between tendings.

Possibly once or twice during a shift father would coordinate the watchman’s rounds with his boiler care chores so that he could nap for a few minutes.  Bill on his never-ending rounds, would then wake father to chat for a few minutes before continuing on.

Needless to say, father had numerous short periods of inactivity every shift.  He read a lot among other things.  However, as father was very mechanically inclined he liked to work with his hands, and forever searched for little things to do with a few minor hand tools within his sphere of expertise.  One night during the 1950s he found a scrap short piece of the heavy duty wire used to make the round pins for the rollers.  As a farmer he imagined forming the wire into a miniature bale hook used to handle baled hay.  Soon one had been bent and sharpened.

On yet another occasion he spent some of his idle time forming a carpenter’s wrecking bar.

On a whim, one day as he grew older, he gave the two objects, as well as several more, to my brother Ronald.  Ron treasured them for many years.  One day he showed them to me, the first I knew they existed.  I admired them immensely.    Shortly before his passing Ron gave these two to me and I treasure them highly.  Sometimes I hold them in my hand and imagine how my father sat one night long ago.  With little else to do he lovingly formed these small tools and now over sixty years later I feel attached to him because of his labor of love.