It is the personal touch, he says, that draws customers to local crafters such as himself.
A short (children's?) story
by
JodanaThe Furniture Man
or
A Good Life
The furniture man lived a good life in a small town by the ocean.
It was a simple life.
He made and sold just enough furniture to take care of his needs plus a little extra.
He loved making furniture and he loved spending time with his son, Sammy.
Sammy didn’t live by the ocean, but he came to visit for a weekend every month.
The furniture man made Sammy a new wooden toy with movable parts every time he came to visit and gave it to him wrapped in newspaper.
The toys were sanded down so smoothly that Sammy had to be careful incase they slid out of his hands like slippery fish.
The furniture man had strong, big hands which he used for making tables and lifting Sammy up high in the air.
When the furniture man set Sammy on his shoulders, Sammy felt like he was riding in the tall branches of a swaying tree.
The things the furniture man made were well-crafted and useful.
He made tables and chairs where families could sit and eat and play games.
He made shelves for books and boxes for toys.
He made chests for keepsakes and doilies and doo-dads.
It took quite a lot of time to make these things by hand, and so the furniture man came to know the people of the town.
They would come over to chat and bring him leftover wood, which he used as often as possible to avoid cutting down a lot of trees.
The old wood they brought came from all sorts of places.
It came from torn apart porches and fences with chipped paint, broken dressers and grandfather clocks, driftwood and even old wooden bell clappers.
The people of the town liked to see how the furniture man transformed all of that done for, trashed wood into beautiful bookshelves and boxes.
They also loved taking walks in the forest by the ocean, so they were glad to recycle.
But the furniture man knew the trees better than any of the townspeople.
All day as he worked, sawdust flew around the shop and the furniture man breathed it in deeply.
All day he shaped the wood and felt it with his hands.
He knew his material well.
He knew that pine was dry and clean, oak dense and strong.
The furniture man lived a good life indeed.
One day, an official looking man from out of town stopped by the shop.
He set his black briefcase on a workbench and looked around disapprovingly.
Then, wrinkling up his officious nose, he set his hands squarely on his hips and said,
“No, no, no. This won’t do at all.”
“Won’t do what?” the furniture man asked. He looked around the shop himself and thought for the first time that it did look a little shabby, especially with the business man standing there in his shiny shoes and diamond cuffs.
“Won’t do anything at all, my dear boy, and that’s just the point. You’ll never get anywhere at this rate. Why, you need to expand, and I’ve got just the thing to bump your business to the stars.”
With that, the business man unlatched both sides of his briefcase and it sprang promptly open.
He reached inside and carefully, oh so carefully, set a tiny toy on the palm of his hand.
It was a miniature furniture making machine.
The man pulled out a handful of toothpicks and fed them to it all at once.
The machine whirred and wheedled for some minutes. Finally, it spit out a tiny little table, just big enough for a family of mice.
When it was finished, a little cloud of sparkling sawdust poofed out from a hole in its side.
The furniture man was impressed. “Well, alright then,” he said, smiling.
He thought of how much time the machine could save him.
He imagined himself soaking up sun on the beach and watching his favorite television program, Woods of the World, while the machine whizzed out tables for him.
“For little money down, I can have one ten feet tall shipped right to your door,” the man said. “You can pay the rest when you start making your fortune,” and he winked like Santa Clause.
The furniture man agreed, and the machine arrived the next day in a large pine crate.
The furniture man placed some ads and soon he had new orders from all over the state. He hummed as he walked to his shop and set his new machine a-whirring.
Then he went home and tried to relax, but his house was no longer quiet.
The phone was ringing off the hook with new orders.
He hired an assistant to answer the phone so he could get some peace.
But there were problems.
Soon there was not enough old wood around for all of his new orders, so he began to chop down the pines around his house.
He wanted to make furniture, not spend all day chopping down trees, so he hired a woodcutter, who also fed the machine.
He wanted to make furniture, not spend his days delivering tables to people all over the state, so he hired a delivery driver.
His business kept expanding like the business man promised, there was no stopping it!
It had taken on a life of its own.
Sammy came to visit, but the furniture man hadn’t even been in his shop lately, so he didn’t have a new toy for him.
Sammy was disappointed, but he wanted to see the machine, so the furniture man took him by the hand and together they walked down to the shop.
Sammy watched the machine whir and wheedle and he laughed when it poofed its cloud of sawdust. “Cool,” he said.
Standing there watching in the machine, the furniture man realized that he had been so busy hiring and figuring out wages and how many tables he needed to sell, that he had missed the last couple episodes of Woods of the World.
He hadn’t touched cedar or oak or pine all month.
When some of his neighbors came by, he had told them to come back later, he was too busy to chat.
The tables he sold were not special or one of a kind any more because machines are made to be consistent, so all the tables the machine made looked exactly the same every time.
That meant that he had to lower his prices and make even more tables to keep up with the bills.
He had cut all the trees on his land, so he had all his wood shipped in from lumber companies.
The furniture man sighed. Even though he had money and success, he was very unhappy.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said to Sammy, and they went to the beach to play.
When they got back, the furniture man called the business man and told him that he didn’t want the good life anymore. He wanted a good life.
But the business man refused to take the machine back, since it had been used.
So the furniture man went down to his shop and set the machine a-whirring for the last time.
He programmed it to make ten tables with chairs, and when it was done he set the tables in his yard and called all of his neighbors over for a potluck.
Everyone came. They talked and ate and had a grand old time.
After everyone was done eating, the furniture man helped Sammy and the other neighborhood children turn the tables over.
They stacked them and secured them and soon they had a jungle gym.
They jumped and swung and yelled and it was the best noise the furniture man had heard all month.
He told the children they were welcome to come and play on it any day.
In the dark of the shop, though no one was there to hear, the machine gave a final whiz-gig pop and sigh of leftover sawdust as it settled into a shop ornament.
The furniture man went back to making furniture and toys by hand and this made the townspeople very happy.
The squirrels which had lived in the pines around his house liked to bury acorns, but they always forgot where they hid them. So the acorns, which really are oak seeds, began to grow in place of the pines he had cut down.
Baby oak trees were coming up all around the furniture man’s place, a beautiful sight to see.
This made the furniture man think that it was, in fact, a very good life.
the furniture man
Let the wealthy and so called great,Roll in splendor and State
save money AT
thefurnitureman@gmail.com
http://www.thefurnitureman.org
2 comments:
that is a great story. i am student in the big university, i wish i could flee from that place and live a simple life as a furniture man's apprentice and learn to work wood all day, but i am trapped in a very different story. i wish you the best.
the words to the song, of life are "go slow go slow"
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