When I Was a Boy – Page 2 – Richard Hopkins Writes

November 18, 2018January 5, 2019

Woodworking: A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Away

I owe my woodworking life to George Lucas. Yes, George Lucas. Or more specifically, I owe it to seeing the original Star Wars movie in 1977. While I look a boyish twenty-nine, I was actually five years old when the epic space opera hit the big screen. As an only child, I had enough toys to play with, and I had several Star Wars action figures bought at Harper’s Five and Dime. However, I really wanted a Star Wars playset. Specifically, I coveted the playset of the cantina in which Han Solo had the shoot-out. But, I grew up in Rabun County in the 1970s and 1980s. We were poor. Daddy has been a lifelong woodworker and I was always in the shop underfoot from the time I could walk. He did what any responsible parent back then would have done. He pointed at the scrap wood heap in the corner, handed me razor sharp hand tools and an electric jig saw and told me to build my own. Did I mention that I was five? Now we don’t let our kids outside without hand sanitizer and bubble wrap. Despite setting the stage for a trip to the emergency room, I made it through the project without any blood or smashed fingers.

I spent weeks working on that playset and ended up making a second one immediately afterword. I still have both. All of my friends who had the real store-bought one thought mine was the coolest thing ever. I believe they were just jealous that Daddy turned me loose with power tools while we were in kindergarten. It was like having Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor for a dad.

That early woodworking project planted the seed for a lifelong love of wood. A year or so later, I decided that I wanted to be a rock star and needed a guitar. Or at least a ukulele. Me and Daddy sat down and looked through the Sears and Roebuck catalog, and of course, he decided we couldn’t afford one. You guessed it… Build it yourself. I believe we got a book from the library and got ideas on proportions and made a Frankenstein ukulele type thing. Daddy used to make recurve hunting bows, and he braided different thickness pieces of bow string for the instrument strings. He helped me out and we had lots of fun building it. Too bad that I have the distinction of being the only person on his side of the family who has zero musical talent.

I have gone through a whole lifetime of trying new hobbies, but always kept woodworking. My skills progressed from the playset and ukulele to the point that I became a semi-professional woodworker and luthier. I’ve made too much furniture to count, and as a luthier I’ve made guitars, dulcimers, ukuleles, mandolins, banjos, and even a violin. Daddy is seventy-five years old and still in the shop with me when his legs let him stand for that long, and we have a whole list of projects we hope to build. May the Force be with us.

October 26, 2018

Greasin’ Boots

I was up at five o’clock this morning to haul The Girl to basketball practice and had some time to kill before starting work. It was pouring rain. I saw two pairs of work boots sitting on the back porch that looked horrible. My first thought was: I hope Daddy didn’t see these yesterday. Daddy has always been one for taking care of his boots, especially his work boots. When I was a kid, even really young, he always saw to it that I had a good pair of boots every autumn, never mind that I would outgrow them in less than a year. I mean really good boots. Red Wing good. But he taught me to take care of them too. It was A Thing in our household. The roof might have leaked, there might not have been sheetrock on some of the walls, but boots were always looked after.

I never saw snow in real life until I was four. I thought it only happened on television. As soon as Daddy saw we were possibly, maybe having snow coming, out came the boot oil and rags. “It’s time to grease some boots,” he would say. We would spend twenty minutes or so rubbing mink oil into the leather, then we’d put them near the wood heater for the boot grease, as he called it, to melt in. In learning this boot greasing ritual, Daddy would tell me repeatedly just how close to put them to the fireplace. Close, but not too close.

After the oil melted into the boots until they glistened, the real work began. Using clean rags to buff the boots until the excess oil was all either rubbed in or buffed off. Then the boots looked like new, and it was time to go play in the snow.

Several decades have passed, but I still keep my boots oiled. I have my Grandpa Ern’s shoe shine box from well before I was born. And today I double checked to make sure they weren’t too close to the fireplace in case Daddy comes by.

October 5, 2018October 6, 2018

Painted Into a Corner: Workin’ With T. Weller and Uncle Buck

Daddy has been a lifelong carpenter, and I basically grew up in the business, with him dragging me to the jobsites on school vacations and weekends beginning when I was around nine or ten. I started out just picking up scrap lumber and cleaning up around the site, but by age twelve he had me doing “a man’s work” with him. Luckily, he also paid me wages accordingly, so I had plenty of spending money.

Many, many characters worked with Daddy through the years. For a while Daddy worked with a legendary (and infamous) mountain man named Larry Whitmire. Larry was a true character, quick to laugh and one of the best pranksters who ever lived. We deer hunted with Larry and his buddies, and it was definitely an experience. A big guy with a long beard and shoulder length hair, Larry looked the part of a mountain man, and usually kept a Ruger .44 Magnum revolver within reach. I remember him once shooting his television with it due to a poor reception. Of course, he also once used the front bumper winch of his truck to winch the truck up into a tree just to see if it could be done, so the television incident was fairly tame.

Another guy who worked with Daddy and Larry was a character named Rodney Henslee. He looked like a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie and drove a vomit green AMC Gremlin, but he had a heart of gold, occasionally taking me on motorcycle rides at breakneck speeds on gravel roads on his CB750.

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