Kingsville, Texas
Shortly after arriving in Kingsville, TX in 1961 to begin my first teaching position at Texas University of A & I, Missy and I rented an furnished apartment and, within a couple of weeks, our landlord discovered we had a cat and said that either the cat or we had to go. We therefore rented a small, simple unfurnished house, purchased a bed and then gave thought to what came next giving that all we owned was a small TV and a plastic chair. To fashion some furniture, I bought a damaged hollow-core door and four metal legs from a hardware store which, when assembled, would serve as our dining table and desk. After obtaining a small loan from the local bank, I purchased a Craftsman ½” electric drill and purchased precut Walnut planks, to make two sitting chairs while Missy sewed the cushions. Fifty-plus years later I was still using the drill.
My next tool purchase was a Dremel rotary drill used to make a panpipe so Papgeno could toot his horn in the upcoming music department’s stage production of Mozart’s Magic Flute.
I also remember starting to make a sofa but never finished it. With the challenges of teaching at A & I, preparing a recital and also performing with the Corpus Christi Orchestra, my venture into woodworking had to be curtailed.
Baltimore, MD 936 Calvert Street (1963)
During my first year at Peabody, I was asked by the Director, Charles Kent, if I’d be interested in building a Zuckermann harpsichord kit for the school. When I asked about the particulars, Kent said that the school would pay for the materials and I could work in the piano maintenance shop in the Conservatory’s basement. He assured me that the piano technician wouldn’t mind sharing the space.
I worked on harpsichord during the school year and, on towards the end of the second semester, I met with Dr. Kent to tell him that I had finished assembling the kit and had moved it from the maintenance shop to a vacant dressing room behind the Concert Hall stage. The piano tech was eager to have the space back in his shop. That was on a Friday. The following Monday morning, as I was walking up the Monument Street hill towards the Conservatory, I saw students loading the harpsichord into the back of a van. I immediately asked what was going on and one of them said that he saw the instrument in the dressing room and had asked Dr. Kent if he could use it for a concert in his church. He gave them permission. Apparently, Dr. Kent thought that “assembled” was equivalent to finished; meaning, it had been sanded and stained. It had not! When the students returned the instrument, it was covered with finger prints and I was, to put it mildly, quite annoyed. So much so that I sent a note to Kent saying that someone else would have to finish the Harpsichord. Given that he had given me a year’s leave of absence to accept a temporary position in the music department at the University of South Florida, he said he’d find someone to sand and finish the harpsichord while I was away. I never mentioned the fingerprints and soon thereafter headed south to Tampa and, in time, put the issue in my memory vault.
Baltimore, MD 1341 Crofton road (1965-1968)
Upon returning to Baltimore the following summer, Missy and I rented a house not far from Morgan State University. Although it had a small workbench in the basement, I was too busy teaching and subbing with the Baltimore Symphony to devote time to woodworking. Simple house repairs were okay but not projects.
Baltimore, MD 4407 Underwood Rd (1968 – 1978)
When Lisa was a year old, we began our search for a house. I had never lived in a house that didn’t share a neighbor’s wall. About a year-and-a-half later, our agent, for the um-teenth time, took us to see yet another, on the North end of Guilford near Cold Spring Lane. As soon as I saw it, I knew that was it and after viewing and discussing the purchase, Missy agreed. In the fall of ‘68 we moved in and over the next seven years I worked on renovating rooms one at a time. The property had a half-finished basement (knotty pine walls and shelves). In the unfinished half were the appliances (furnace, water heater, stationary basin, etc.) and a small enclosed area containing a 2’ x 6’ work table. I now had a dedicated space but not much time to work with wood if it wasn’t related to house renovations. In the summer of ‘72 Carey was born and during his first year, I worked on completing my dissertation knowing full well that once Carey became mobile, the task would have been impossible. In ‘78 I constructed eight doll houses for a client who never took delivery. Eventually, I gave them to friends and colleagues whose children created beautiful displays within the tiny rooms with miniature furniture replicas.
Elkridge Estates (1978-1984)
Following our separation and divorce, for the following six years I rented an apartment. I would use either the kitchen counter or a small table on the second floor balcony to work on small projects requiring only hand tools. That is, except on one occasion when I decided to restore a disassembled moped that I had stored in the trunk of my car. In the evenings, when it was dark, I would carry parts into the unit and then store them on the balcony which overlooked a road in front of an area of trees. I was convinced that no one could see what I was doing as I worked on restoring the moped. That was until one day I received a call from the manager saying that working on the balcony wasn’t permitted. The moped parts went back to the trunk of the car prior to going to their final resting place in the county dump. I think that was the straw that sucked me out of the apartment and signaled that I needed to look for a house and say goodbye to apartment living.
Baltimore, MD 510 Windwood Rd (1985-1999)
Shortly before meeting Joni Spence in 1984, I purchased the Windwood Road house and over the next year spent most of my time at Peabody serving as Director of Summer Session, Placement Office supervisor and Master Class coordinator while also teaching part time and getting to know Joni when.
After setting our wedding date, we decided to remove a small addition at the rear of 510 and add a great room with a cathedral ceiling. While contractors did all the major construction – wall-boarding and floors – Joni and I installed the wall and ceiling insulation. I also added the lights, outlets, wiring and installed the baseboard hot water heating system. Woodworking during that time was limited to staining and installing the pieces that made up the bow window, the atrium door and the side window trim. On January 3, 1986 we installed the ceiling lights and removed the scaffolding, just a day before the wedding in our just-completed addition.
The basement of our home became my workshop area and, before long, power tools were purchased and carted down the cellar steps and, in time, I completed projects both large and small and carried them up those steps and out the door, so to speak. Along with them, sawdust also made it’s way in nooks and crannies throughout the house. C’est la vie when working with wood.
Over the years the my woodworking activities evolved from working in kitchens, on balconies, in cramped quarters, basements and, eventually, into the workshop of my dreams constructed in 1999 in Upperco, MD at
3315 Mt. Carmel Road. (1999-1916)
After retiring from Peabody, I continued to perform occasionally as my former profession becoming my hobby and my lifelong hobby morphing into working with wood full-time. But before I could do that, I had to build the workshop. In the meantime, I set-up my power tools and other equipment in our garage and drew up plans for the workshop, found contractors and, by mid-summer, the structure was completed and I was off and running.
Seventeen years later, it was time to downsize mainly because taking care of three-and-a half acres containing a parterre, a rose berm, vegetable and humming bird gardens as well as a large pond area was too much for the aging and, sometimes, aching bones. The next phase in the woodworking journey took me to the
Bykota Senior Center Woodshop in Towson MD
During the time (two years) when I was selling my shop inventory prior to our moving to Mays Chapel in Timonium, MD, Joni and I Bykota center and woodshop. Soon thereafter, I joined the center and started working in the shop.
12300 Rosslare Ridge Road, Mays Chapel, Timonium MD (Nov. 1916 – )
Once settled in our Mays Chapel condo, I drove the six miles every morning to the Bykota shop where I worked on many small and some larger items. In February, 2019, Kirk Justis, who had been in charge for many years, died. Soon thereafter, I was asked to take his place. On March 13 all senior centers in Baltimore County closed because of the Covid-19 epidemic.
Rather than being stymied by the novel coronavirus, I decided to outfit our Utility room into a small workshop area by adding a workbench, a benchtop drill press and a small router table. To hold some small tools I had kept, I took a tall metal shelf unit out of our storage bin and installed it in the furnace room. When Kellirae and Bill added a cushioned floor mat, that put a finishing touch on my mini-workshop which I shared with the furnace and water heater.
On May 1, 2021, I presented a demo of the workshop which now appears on Youtube.com under the auspices of the Howard County Woodworking Guild of which I have been a member since 2010. Click here to view the presentation.
On May 24, 2021 the Bykota Senior Center, including the Wood Shop, reopened and I returned to take charge of the shop, a volunteer position that I never expected to be up my alley, so to speak.