Woodworking:   Click on photographs with a blue border to enlarge, click back or left arrow

 A dream of a lifetime was to have my own woodworking shop. When I was 12, my dad bought me an electric table saw. We had no place to use it except in the house. Can you imagine in your wildest dream, an electric table saw, standing on a hardwood floor in the hall of our relatively new brick home. I say brick home because many or most homes built now days are constructed with brick. In that day, our home was the second brick home in our hometown. Therefore, it was special to us and an odd place for a 12 year old to be producing sawdust that settled on almost everything. At that time, during the second world war. we did not own a vacuum cleaner of any type or fashion. That was over 60 years ago and I digress to much.

    Needless to say, I have always enjoyed working with wood. One of the largest sawmills and planners was located in my hometown. Smith Lumber Company with a network of facilities throughout north central Alabama and to make things even better, Mr. Smith was one of my dad's closest friends. I made everything I could dream of;, even a sailboat and I don't mean a toy or model sailboat, I mean one that I sailed around in Dempsey lake. Those were the precious innocent years. One of our kin, Harper Lee, wrote a book and called it "To Kill a Mockingbird." The first page set the tone, "The Finches....Methodist went up the Alabama River...." The book was made into a movie staring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, a lawyer, defending a black man accused of rape. The movie depicted a small town very much like my own. I continue to digress.

For years, Margaret and I saved to build a woodworking shop for the days when I would retire. That day arrived in June of 1998 when we moved into our brand new retirement home built on a corner lot of 150' X 200'. Behind the house was a fenced in backyard. It was fenced  with 5' chain length or tornado wire. Inside the back and side yard was a garden plot and yes, yes, my dream wood working shop, 32' X 32'. I had also saved several thousand dollars in savings bonds to use in purchasing my large equipment as well as hand tools.

During the time I was building Mimi's ramp (see Hobbies-Puppies) I turn on my shop vacuum for the first time in over six months. If you are familiar with that sort of equipment you are  aware that it has an intake port, to which, a hose is attached.....it also has an exhaust port. The sawdust and other debris is drawn thought the hose and is deposited in a 40 gallon container, the air continues out of the exhaust port. I knew it was about 2/3s full of sawdust but I needed to "suck up" a little sawdust from building Mimi - Gate! When I turned it on 9 mice went sailing through the air for about eight feet. They had built a warm, safe, cozy bed in the saw dust. Had the exhaust been turned toward the wall, they would smashed against the wall and probably killed...Now every time I turn on the shop vacuum, in my mind's eye, I will see those little mice flying through the air like tennis balls from  a tennis ball ejector at a practice court!

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