A Good Read?

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Posted on Sun, Mar. 20, 2005

Carpenter's tips for life as well as the shop

I read for information, not for pleasure. This puts me at odds with
everyone in my house but the dog.

And it is, I've discovered, the most efficient way to accumulate the
latest wisdom available and commit it to memory so I can better serve
my readers.

I do feel guilty about it sometimes, so when I have an opportunity for
expiation, I try to take it.

Fortunately, that's what The Carpenter's Notebook has offered me. The
book (CenterLine Publishing, $16.95), by Mark Clement of Ambler, is
the best of both worlds: a novel that incorporates information you can
use in the workshop.

It sounds strange, I know, but after finishing the book, I'm ready to
make the all-too-late suggestion to Jane Austen that if she had just
included some furniture-building tips in Pride and Prejudice, I might
not have used her book as a doorstop.

Appearing almost seamlessly within Clement's narrative are a few pages
of instructions, complete with illustrations, on how to make a toolbox
or frame a doorway.

Even if you've never picked up a hammer, it's hard to argue with the
idea that carpentry is a metaphor for life, and Clement, executive
editor of Tools of the Trade magazine, has run with that.

His story is that of Brendan Herlihy, an unhappy bloke whose marriage
is on the rocks and whose real estate career is about as exciting as
filling nail holes in cedar siding.

With marriage counseling going nowhere, Herlihy decides to send his
girls off to camp and spend the summer away from his wife and with his
mother, completing the artist's studio that his contractor father,
Gideon, had begun carving out of his shop for her before his death two
years earlier.

The notebook of the title is Gideon's, a contractor's clipboard with
yellowed sheets of paper that provide Brendan with an outline on how
to live his life. Gideon had offered these life lessons to Brendan
when the boy was growing up, but Brendan neither understood their
meaning nor seemed interested in even listening.

Only now, after his father's death, does Brendan realize that by
working hard and using Gideon's tools and rules, he will finally be
able to find the answers that will give his life meaning.

"All the lessons Gideon learned on job sites Brendan uses to rebuild
his life," said carpenter-turned-writer/editor Clement, whose own
father was a professor and with whom, he acknowledges, he wasn't
close. Clement, then, is both Gideon and Brendan, applying his
carpentry skills to sorting out Brendan's life.

Clement, 36, also applied those skills to his own life. Like
Brendan's, his marriage fell apart and ended in divorce. He decided to
move to Ambler from Virginia to be near his daughter, Alexis, 3, who
lives nearby with his ex-wife.

"Through carpentry, I learned to do the right thing," Clement said.
"The very same skills one uses to renovate a house or build a table
are transferable to life. That's what I found out, and that's what
Gideon found out and passed down in those notes to Brendan.

"If you aren't always on top of what you are doing, if you aren't
paying attention to your job all the time, it can put you in danger,"
he said. "If you are working on the roof and forget for a moment where
you are, you can fall off the ladder. These very same skills are
transferable to your life.

"I need to be there for Alexis, whether it is watching her play soccer
or taking her to ballet class. When you find something that works, you
stick with it, whether it is carpentry or in your relationships with
other people."

A lot of people approach life in the way that makes them most
comfortable. But, as Brendan learns, the time comes when you have to
swallow hard and do something that makes you uncomfortable - in his
case, ending a marriage that wasn't really doing him or his wife any
good and that would eventually do more damage to their children.

"Brendan found his answer through carpentry, by spending the summer
rebuilding the shop into a studio," Clement said. "There is a right
answer, but you won't begin to look for one until you know that one
does exist.

"Brendan, and I, learned the right thing to do."

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"On the House" appears Sundays in The Inquirer. Contact Alan J.
Heavens at 215-854-2472 or [email protected].

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Thomas J. Watson - WoodDorker

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1 (webpage)

TW

Tom Watson