BUZZon.com - Father’s Hands

It stands in a corner of the front room, seven feet tall, simple and elegant, a walnut corner cupboard with glass panels in the top doors, a drawer, and two lower doors with wood panels. With its old fashioned shellac finish it has a rich dark glow, and in the dim interior of the upper section stand a few things I wish to protect and remember.

The drawer narrows toward the back to fit the shape of the cupboard, and on the outside of it is written the name of the cupboard’s maker, the date of its manufacture, and a bit of incidental information. The name is William G. Helwig. It was made by my father in June of 1951.

Woodwork was the family trade. At 17 my grandfather went to work at the Knechtel Furniture factory, which had been founded by his uncle. By the time my father was in school, my grandfather was superintendent of one of the Knechtel factories in Hanover, Ontario. At 16, my father walked out of school and went to the factory looking for a job.

“Give him a job,” his father said, “he’ll soon be ready to go back.”

But he didn’t go back. At 22 he was selling and installing store fixtures in Montreal. That was 1929, and within a few months the company was going out of business and my father was living on coffee and doughnuts. He got back to Toronto and spent the Depression selling insurance, Electrolux vacuum cleaners, finally subscriptions to the Toronto Star.

At the end of the Hitler war, he had a regular job at DeHavilland aircraft, and after the war he went back to the family trade and began a business manufacturing small pieces of office furniture. Then a summer holiday changed everything. We were spending a week at a small summer resort run by my mother’s brother, and my parents met someone who knew someone who wanted to sell a business in Niagara-on-the-Lake where they repaired and refinished and sold antique furniture.

In 1948 we moved to the quiet town of Niagara and my father began the work that he continued until he was over seventy. He never made a fortune, but between rent from parts of the house, my mother’s part-time work as a book-keeper, and his long hours, they survived. At first he continued manufacturing oak waste baskets for Grand and Toy, even had one or two people working for him, but finally he found it easiest to work alone, repairing and refinishing fine old furniture.

What he didn’t do, mostly, was make furniture. The price of a handmade piece was more than most people wanted to pay. But in 1951 a woman who lived in Niagara Falls came to him with the idea that he might design and build her a corner cupboard, a unique piece, just the size and shape she needed. He agreed. Thirty years or so later, my father got an unexpected phone call. The woman who had commissioned the piece was leaving her home for a small apartment, and she had the idea that he might like to buy it back. So he did. After the death of my parents the corner cupboard came to me.

For this unique piece my father had on hand some ancient walnut, cut in the Niagara district in 1780, air-dried for 150 years. It is of a remarkable colour and texture, very different from commercial kiln-dried walnut.

Around the glass panels of the doors, this hard, ancient wood is decorated with a narrow bead. I know how it was done, with a simple, home-made tool my father invented. I’ve used the same trick myself.

Yes, we all come and go, and our things sometimes outlive us. In the long ways of the future perhaps some great-grandson will study the cupboard and picture my father’s hands at work creating it.

David Helwig’s newest book is a novella, Killing McGee.

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The Other Notebookby David Helwig

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The Other Notebook
by David Helwig