“Let us now praise famous men. And infamous carpenters. The selection process was almost complete. I’d been sent by the gals in the office to the pine shed, to meet Ron, and arriving in my pickup I didn’t know exactly where the door was. I overshot. The guy who I had to think was Ron popped out, and waved me back, then disappeared. I found the entry, and a small set of stairs. It opened up into a voluminous space, and I stepped back to take it in, the stepped forward, to offer Ron the specs scrawled on a lumber scrap I was packing. It said something like 5/4 x 10 x 8 and that sent him off looking around. “You want it dressed?” he said. I had no idea. “Uh, it’s for shelves”, I replied. “You going to paint it?” he said. “Uh, I dunno. Guess we’ll see what it looks like first.” That made sense, I think. He nodded, which made me feel I was doing okay. The towers of the sawn were distracting me. I couldn’t help but think of the trees. “Is this local wood?” I said. “Mostly from the Adirondacks”, he replied. That also hit a visceral acupuncture point, so to speak, having grown up in NY state as I was, and enamored of vacations in the north country. And reflecting on this, and why I might be one person out of five hundred surrounded by raw, harvested boards today, in a historic, family-owned warehouse, I was humbled. Not everybody cares about inert materials, harvested by hand. But I do. I spent a good portion of my youth sitting about as high up in a pine tree as you might want to, before you endangered yourself. An escape, close to home, where no one was able to follow me or mess with me. Kids need that, sometimes. When people are drunk at home, or always fighting. I asked Ron if he’d mind if I took a photo. I thought about it before asking and almost didn’t ask, in case he was camera shy. I don’t like to make people uncomfortable. One photo had Ron in it, sort of blurry. I made it seem like I wasn’t interested in him in particular. That’s how deferential I get. And as lumber yards go, this place took me back a few decades. Ron wrote up my order on something he ripped off a 8 x 12 pad, which I put in my pocket, then we bungie-corded the premium pine to my truck bed so it wouldn’t slide. Over at the office, I wrote a check, which was cheaper, and things were chill like rural outposts should be. Ron I guess had gone into the back room, and when he showed up again, he handed me a couple things, which I could only call swag. Two foam beer can sleeves, to keep your beverages cold, and so you could think fondly about A. Johnson Lumber. And surely, I will.”
