Second Best Hand and Broken Window Serenade

By Bobby Neal Winters

In another life, I was briefly the pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Opolis, Kansas.  During that time, I got to know some fine people, some fine characters.  One of those was a man who I will call the Teacher, to preserve his anonymity for the sake of his family.  I don’t know why I bother because everyone in Opolis will know exactly who I am talking about by my description.

He was a singular character.

The Teacher had a standing poker game in his workshop.  I am not a gambler or a poker player, but he had invited me to play on a couple of occasions, and he gave me lessons.  The first lesson cost me $10 and the second cost me $5. All paid a little at a time in nickels, dimes, and quarters.

He liked Texas Hold-em and Omaha.  I would be at a loss to explain the rules of either of them right now other than to say the hands are evaluated like the standard poker hand.

The Teacher taught me a lot.  The first rule was this: “If you have the cards, make them pay.”

This was paired with a second rule that I will share with you in a minute.  The pairing of these two rules was in a fashion the ancient Greeks would have called a paradox and modern theologians would call cruciform tension.

I learned the second rule when I had drawn a full-house.  It’s a very good hand.  I was applying rule one and betting as hard as I could with nickels, dimes, and quarters.

Then came the time to lay my cards on the table and I did.

The Teacher looked at my cards and said, “I am so sorry,” as he laid down four-of-a-kind and raked my change into his pot.  

He then taught me rule two: “There is nothing worse than a second-best hand.”

That may have been the night I considered my poker education complete.

I was listening to one of my current favorite songs this morning on the way to school when this connection crossed my mind.

The song is “Broken Window Serenade” by the group Whiskey Myers.  The song tells the tale of a man’s love of a beautiful woman.  More than a beautiful woman, a woman cursed with beauty.

Her beauty took her to Hollywood. It wasn’t enough to make her a movie star, but it was enough to get her work as a stripper. Following that came substance abuse, wasting away, and, finally, death.

Life had dealt her a second-best hand.  She played it, but maybe she wasn’t beautiful enough; maybe that was all she was and didn’t develop any of the skills that need to go with that to make a movie star.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve moved from being jealous of the beautiful to feeling something not un-akin to pity.

The Beautiful--by their very nature--have this asset on full display.  You can just look at them and know they are beautiful. That’s just the nature of the quality.  There is something within us that causes us to react positively to this.  Though as we develop in our own ambitions, the positive reaction can turn to jealousy.

They can become victims of their own beauty if they pay too much attention to those who whisper in their ears that they need to go to Hollywood.

It is my personal opinion that by some plan--God’s, Evolution’s, or Nature’s, take your pick--that the Beautiful are meant to be leaders.  We are naturally drawn to them; don’t deny it.

The problem is that to be a leader more is needed than just beauty.  Other skills must be developed.  Some do develop these skills and become leaders. You look at them and like them and want them to like you.  You’ll do what they ask.

Think about it: There are not very many ugly people in leadership positions.

There are those who develop the skills but don’t wind up in the positions of leadership.  In some sense, they’ve been dealt a second-best hand themselves.

The thing about being dealt a second-best hand is what you do in the next round. You can let a second-best hand and wind up in a poignant country song, or you could do something else.

I’ve been privileged to be around some beautiful, skillful people in my community.  For whatever reason, they’ve not become movie stars; they’ve not become politicians. Nor have they taken the dark road described in “Broken Window Serenade.”

They took their beauty and their skills and have devoted themselves to community service.  You look at them and like them and want them to like you. They are great in getting people to become involved in helping the community.

Anyway, that’s just me looking “through a broken window with a different point of view.”

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 And a little child shall lead them

By Bobby Neal Winters

I was in my workshop when my grandson came to ask me for a piece of wood.  He had a piece of a palette I’d picked up off the curb and cut up with a reciprocating saw.

I said, “Sure.”  I would’ve said the same if he’d asked me for a kidney.  He’s my grandson. The only “no” would be if he asked me to use a wood chisel to break a rock open with. Then I would buy him a stone chisel.

He smiled. Then he asked, “Can I have some sand paper?”

I asked him what grit he wanted.  He told me that any was fine.

I gave him some 220 grit because it was on top.  He thanked me and left.

Some days later, I walked past where he’d left the board he’d sanded.  He’d gotten through the rough, weathered wood on top and found some nice white oak beneath.  Having exposed the wood’s beauty to the world again, he was satisfied, so he left the sanded board on the table.

Seeing the oak, I remembered that I had some more of it left.  I’d used some of it to make a knitting box for one of the boy’s aunts, but I had some left over.

Time to put it to use.

Reclaiming scrap wood is a process.

In some sense, it’s like working with rough cut wood. In a case like this palette wood, it has never been processed with the idea that needed to be pretty.  It is, however, more likely to have a nail or two in it. Or three or four.  This is important because to work it up, you have to run it through a planer.

Now, I said “have to.” You could smooth it up with a plane.  If you’ve reached the level of holiness that you do that, I say go for it.  For my part, I’ve invested money in a DeWalt planer, and I am going to use it.  If you run a nail (or screw or anything metal) through your planer, it’s going to nick the blades and when you replace them it costs time and money.

You can nick your blade when you are hand-planing too, but it’s not as big (i.e. expensive) a deal. 

Putting palette wood through a planer--provided you’ve got the nails out--is an incredibly satisfying experience. You take off the rough, discolored outer layer and expose the grain of the wood beneath.  In this, as I said before, it was white oak.  

You can make a ship out of white oak.  They did in the old days. If they made one out of a palette, it’d have to be for mice.

In any case, I didn’t make a ship.  It was something smaller.

The first couple of pieces of oak that I milled up were quite cracked, having been exposed to the evils of rain and sun for too long.  Because of this, I cut them into narrow strips and reglued them.

If I didn’t make a ship, what did I make?

Well, I made the next best thing: A pencil box.

I’d been using my router table to make some drawers, so I used it to make a pencil box with the same methods. I put a rebate on the long sides of the bottom piece. Then I put a rebate on the bottom and sides of the end pieces.  I didn’t do anything with the side pieces. I glued it, clamped it, let it dry, and then I sanded it.

The attentive reader has noticed I’ve left out something important.  

What about the top?

The wood was too thin for me to use the hinges that I have. Indeed, the sides were too narrow for me to cut the top off, which I would’ve had to do if I were going to make that kind of a box.

I could’ve cut grooves in the sides and slid my lid on and off, but it was too narrow for that too.

I decided to use a Japanese toolbox-style lid.  You can think of it as a puzzle-box lid if you want to. (It got the better of some of the guys I have coffee with.) It doesn’t require any metal to make, but relies on friction--and ingenuity--instead.

When all of the glue had dried, I sanded it and finished it with a linseed oil and beeswax mixture.

I was so pleased with it, I made two more.

Now I have to talk to Santa to see who they need to go to.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

Cleaning a Stanley No. 5

 Cleaning a Stanley No. 5

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am still learning things about myself.  I am still learning how to explain myself to the world. Because of the way I am wired up, I have to come at it indirectly.

I’ve been cleaning up my workshop.  Cleaning up is something that should be a part of the daily routine, but that is easier said than done. It’s much easier to put it off to the next day, and then to the next.  When you take out your tools to work, it’s easy to say, I will be using these tomorrow, so I will just leave them out.  You do that a few days in a row, and then for a week, and then you have a mess.

Well, I had let my workshop get into a mess.  This wasn’t the first time so I do know how to clean up a mess: make sure the trash can is empty and pick a table (or a corner or a corner of a table) and clean that.

My assembly/finishing table was  in a horrible mess so I started on it. I picked a corner and--because the trash was already empty--I started throwing away and putting away.  I got that table clean so then I went over to my workbench and threw away and put away until I could see the top of it.

Then I got to another part of the shop that needed attention. I threw away some stuff, but when I moved it I found something that someone had given to me: it was a Stanley No. 5 plane.

An honest-to-God Stanley.

Now, I do have another No. 5 plane, but it's a Spear & Jackson. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with a Spear & Jackson.  They make some fine products for handtool woodworking, but for planes--I’ve come to understand--Stanley is something of a standard.

This Stanley had been given to me with the idea that I would restore it, but it had  got put aside and had gotten something sat on top of it. Now here it was in my hand with a clean workbench just waiting to be used.

This beautiful Stanley plane was absolutely filthy. To be clear, it wasn’t filthy with dirt; it wasn’t filthy like it had been left in a chicken coop; it was filthy with accretions that told a story of it being in a workshop like mine for decades. It was covered with a concretion made up of sawdust, wood dust (which is finer than sawdust), and an alchemical mixture of various finishes.

I got my flathead screwdriver and took the plane down to its component parts.  I retrieved my turpentine from the shelf. Some of it I put into a paper cup so that I could soak the screws and other small parts in. I then put some more only a shop rag and a steel scrunchy of the type used to clean cast iron skillets.

Then I got to work with the elbow grease. First I rubbed and scrubbed.  Then I scrubbed and rubbed.

After I got the filth off, I discovered what the real problem was: The blade.

The blade is the heart of every plane.  The purpose of the rest of the plane is to hold the blade at the correct angle and to allow you to adjust it conveniently.  But the blade is the sine qua non. From the Latin, without which there is not. From the Okie, the whole shootin’ match.

I don’t want to tell you how many videos I’ve watched on the subject of sharpening. What is more, I surely don’t want to know.  But they have changed me. Once I had cleaned the blade enough to see it, I immediately noticed two things. The first was that the last person who’d tried to sharpen this blade did not know what they were doing. I say this not meaning to insult whoever gave it to me nor any of the relatives from whom it had come. There wasn’t a chain of custody attached. Let’s assume a well-meaning child had tried to sharpen it.  The second thing I noticed was there was a big chip out of the edge of the blade.

The good news was the cure to both these problems is more elbow grease, and fortunately I’ve got plenty of that.  

I got out my diamond sharpening stones.

That sounds fancier than it actually is. Basically, these are three thin sheets of stainless steel that have had dust from industrial diamonds coated on them in varying densities: 800 grit, 1000 grit, and 1200 grit.

I presented the blade to the first stone and pulled it back and forth until both the poor sharpening and the chip from the edge were gone. And then I did it a while longer.  I took it from there to each of the finer stones in turn until I had my final polish. I tested the blade on a piece of paper, and it went through it like butter.

After that, I reassembled all of the clean parts and tuned the plane.

Stanley deserves its reputation.

After I was done, I myself was covered with turpentine and, according to my wife, smelled like a Christmas tree.  She brought me a change of pants to my shop before she let me back into the house.

My workshop is not an operating theater, but it’s better than it had been. I’ve got my table and my workbench back in shape to work on, and I’ve got a lovely Stanley No. 5.

It wasn’t a bad day.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.