Wood Butcher / Word Butcher

Wood Butcher

I butcher words with all the flare and thoughtlessness of a concrete worker setting wooden forms slathered with steric acid, release goo that separates the wood from the concrete as it mutates chemically from a fluid to a solid.

My father was a carpenter whose skill spanned the spectrum of activities of that class of worker who builds forms for the foundation of an ice arena to cutting dovetail joints for jewelry boxes made from a hickory tree he’d harvested.

His collection of saws and hammers were never displayed on pegboard like trophies or some hobby workshop other dads would vanish into on weekends. Dad’s tools were jumbled in a toolbox he’d made out of scrap lumber.

All his tools bore the scars of use and the abuse of being hauled in the back of an old pickup truck on a bare metal bed, bouncing over dirt roads to a job site, which is not to say he didn’t care for them, he just worked the hell out of them.

Dad’s hammers made it clear to me as a kid that there is no one kind of hammer. Each one has a special purpose, a particular attribute that makes it for a specific task; speaking of only claw hammers those which tap in tacks to spike drivers.

He used to refer to the guys who set the forms for footings as wood butchers because the hammer that hung from their leather belts did not have a claw like other hammers, instead opposite the head was a hatchet head for butchering wood.

Or so he used to joke but as I grew to understand he had also been a wood butcher and it was a term of endearment since without the work of the wood butcher there would be no foundation upon which to build a structure.

One builds a steady foundation, pours the footings. The wood butcher is not a worker who shapes and sands a chest of drawers. When the concrete has become solid, his butchered wood is pulled away revealing the base.

This base is a pedestal for the work of the next person who swings a different hammer, the framer who bangs double-headed spikes and sinkers into two by fours with a long-handled, 28-ounce, framing hammer all day long.

Later will come the drywallers with different hammers and roofers with still other shaped hammers. The trim carpenters finish up on the interior, using their smaller hammers differently as they tap finish nails with a nail set punch.

Carpenters cut lumber with a saw of some kind and drive or push nails or make nail-less joints using a hammer of some specialized shape and weight. It is their commonality to employ these tools whether hand or powered.

My grandfather was a carpenter. So, dad became a carpenter, too. I like to imagine him wearing a white shirt all week. White shirt without a tie. This was a white t-shirt and dungarees, each pocket containing some amount of sawdust.

By choice I do not work with hammers or saws. Instead I slather color on canvas or sit at my laptop and butcher words.