Wood shop, Francis Parkman Junior High School.
He stood imperiously at the front of his class,
backbone ramrod straight,
and dispensed his wisdom, always judgmental.
“There are a thousand ways to screw up a job,
but only one way to do it right”.
It was his habit to call us dunderheads and weasels
and he could not be pleased.
When you brought a finished project to be graded
he always seemed distracted or annoyed
as if your unworthy offering were a burden to him.
He would frown and turn the object every which way
noting each nick and gouge,
faults that you had hoped he would not see.
Somehow I finished his class.
My grandmother got the bookcase.
I don’t know who got it when she passed away.
Maybe they saw the nicks and gouges and threw it away.
“This thing has been screwed up a thousand ways”, they probably said.
Somehow my grandmother had never complained.
More than a year later, during the summer, Mr. Moore’s son drowned.
They had been in the same canoe,
challenging white water in an upper reach.
I often wondered who had misjudged the turbulent chute,
Moore the younger, or Moore the elder.
Either way, the boy was lost.
“There are a thousand ways to capsize a canoe”.
When he came back at the beginning of the following school year
the proud bearing and arrogance were gone.
With wood, his hands were still certain,
but with students he now had a softer touch.
“There are a thousand ways to try to cope with a nightmare that won’t go away”.
I encountered him at the grocery store a couple of years later and he paused,
said hello, and asked “Are you still working wood, son”?
We spoke briefly and I told him that no, I had not made anything since his class.
I was surprised that he recognized me.
Even at school, he had never spoken to me before
and I hadn’t realized he even knew I existed.
So many dunderheads had passed his way.
Thousands of them.