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The Workshop
November 25, 2025
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The workshop is all cleared out now.
Everyone is grown and has moved on... or has died.
My mind envisioned an old German man in suspenders... cobbling a shoe perhaps...
or designing a stained-glass window from broken pieces of glass that he had gathered on a
country walk... in the good ole days when the world wasn't moving... quite so fast...
around the people who lived in a world that... found time to fix things.
My dad liked to fix things. He had the intellect of an engineer... like many farmers...
using all his skills to make due with what he had... obstinately refraining from calling
someone else on the phone... to get an estimate of the cost... and to pay someone
else to fix something that required only basic skills...
a combination of a mechanic
and a blacksmith... making something from scraps and wires and leftover pieces
of metal and lumber... that would serve quite nicely the repair or creation needed on
the farm and its equipment.
Then I pictured a new family... living in the old farmhouse, now.
I pictured the new daddy sitting at a workbench... leaving the door open to
welcome a young son or daughter who might happen to pass by in their play...
how his sons would come... one at a time... to have a special love moment
between them... as his son watched him work... and they chatted quietly... and casually.
The workshop was a way for the daddy to relieve whatever worries of the day
he may be having... while he fixed something... or worked on a hobby... or
carved a design in a restored cabinet that would fit nicely in the kitchen...
making something beautiful from something that someone had sent to a thrift store or placed
at the curb as garbage... making a piece of beauty being so much more fulfilling than hanging
out in a bar with frustrated old men who drank their worries away... watching dancing girls
forget their inhibitions... and their wiser cautions.
Dad and son had already had dinner... watched the news of the day... chatted
with Mom while she cleared the dishes and put on a pot of fresh coffee.
After dinner... was family time. Mom would bake cookies or start a jigsaw puzzle...
or bring out a board game or deck of cards.
The kids would sometimes play kickball into the night... in the light of the porch or patio.
And occasionally daddy would just go out to his workshop... alone... wanting the quiet.
And... there was always time to talk... to tell stories... to answer questions... to solve problems...
to give advice... or just to get lost in a dream as he made his fine creation.
What does a man do without a good workshop?
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