GOD’S GIFTS: STORIES FROM MY FATHER

September 9, 2024

Woodworker’s Shop

My dad loved woodworking for as long as I can remember. When I was three years old, we lived in White Plains, Georgia. I had three brothers. We needed a dining room table and so he built a walnut table with six chairs. The wood came from a neighbor’s chicken coop. Daddy used very rudimentary tools because that was all he had. I now have this table and chairs. Some 70+ years later, this set is beautiful and sturdy.

When my dad was close to retirement age, he was asked to serve a church as a part-time pastor. The home my parents purchased had the extra appeal of a large metal shop, partially hidden by wisteria vines and pecan trees. Daddy organized the shop to fit his woodworking interests. He worked under the tutelage of another pastor who was a woodworker and learned about refinishing furniture as a business. He started a business which he named “Frank’s Finishing Touch.” He told me in later years, after retiring from the ministry, he felt he was continuing to minister to people. He met people from all walks of life. He had a wonderful listening ear, and I can envision the coveralled pastor still being adept at his profession though covered with sawdust.

Not only did my dad refinish beautiful antiques for the people in their South Georgia town, but each year at Thanksgiving, our family would meet in Kansas City and my parents would bring refinished pieces for each of us children. I have a 1940 sideboard that I treasure from one of those trips. An interior designer friend said it well— “Brother Kirkland, you are an artist in wood!”

Pastor’s Study

My dad grew up on a farm six miles from Cobbtown, Georgia. He told me his pastor made being a pastor look like fun. Daddy felt called to preach when he was 18 and went to a junior college where he met my mother. He went to college and seminary and finished about the time I graduated from high school. Being a resourceful person born of days on the farm and many moves, he saw potential in the child’s playhouse that stood a few feet from his shop. He constructed a desk by placing a long board across two filing cabinets. A window above the desk gave him a view of the long driveway and front yard. He installed a window air-conditioning unit in the side window to keep the study cool during the hot humid summer. He built bookshelves across the back wall and set up a copy machine on the wall closest to the door. Now all he had to after spending time in his shop was to change from his coveralls to shirt and trousers and walk a foot or two to his newly designed study. I have wonderful memories of our visits in his study when I was there for summer vacation and he would pull out a book that he had been reading and give it to me.

The Summer Kitchen

Daddy made a steadfast friend who was in the church and was a fellow woodworker. From that friendship developed a men’s group of fellow woodworkers. The criteria according to my dad was “you have to make sawdust.” The perfect setting for this loosely organized men’s group was “the summer kitchen.” When my parents moved to this home built in 1876 they discovered the usefulness of a screened-in kitchen in the backyard. It was attached to the carport and had a concrete floor. Reeds grew outside the kitchen, giving one the feeling of life on the lake. There was a stove and refrigerator. Daddy added a small hot water heater and a rustic table from his boyhood home. My parents learned the proper name for this outdoor room was summer kitchen.” My dad once said that if he hadn’t been a preacher he would have “worked in a greasy spoon.” That was his way of saying he loved to cook. He had learned from his mother, a great Southern cook. When she was ill, he would come home from college for the weekend and cook. He would make trips from the kitchen to the front room where she was in bed and ask her questions as he prepared the meal. Some of his specialties were breakfasts with homemade biscuits and unforgettable suppers with fried catfish, hushpuppies, and grits.

Mother bought this clock for Daddy.

When our family visited in the summer, Daddy would cool things off for our evening meal in the summer kitchen. He called it “air-conditioning.” He would drape a hose over the tin roof and position the fan in such a way that we were comfortable and cool.

The men’s group came up with a name for their group—“The Woodbutchers of Americus”—and held dinner meetings when someone took the initiative to set a date and time and menu. Daddy would cook and the others would do the cleanup. Most mornings, a couple of the woodworkers would drop by the summer kitchen for coffee. Thus, most every day, my dad would walk a few steps across the yard, through the carport, and into the summer kitchen. He would put on his bib apron and become the cook for family or friend or fellow woodworkers.

I see my dad as a man with many gifts and his apron, coveralls, and dress clothes all speak of his service and love for his fellowman.

Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.

If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God.

If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

(I Peter 4:10-11)