Handcrafted Page 3

  Spending time with Dad and my extended family was fun, but I still hated the back and forth. As I got older and became more involved in school activities, it got tougher. I felt constantly split in two, as if I were always disappointing one or both of my parents. If, for instance, some cousins on my mom’s side were coming to Atlanta and staying at my grandparents’ house, I’d have to choose whether to skip my weekend with Dad and stay with Mom, which created in me a painful tug-of-war. Did my parents mean well? You bet. Did I feel caught in the middle, as so many children of divorce do? Absolutely.

  On the plus side, because of all the time I spent in Atlanta during summer vacations and weekends at my grandparents’ place while still living in Asheville, Georgia still felt like home. In some ways, I preferred it. The pace of life in Atlanta matched my stride. People were busy there. My cousins and friends spoke without the thick country accent I’d picked up in Asheville. Their parents took them to the mall and drove nicer cars. They lived in one place and didn’t wear hand-me-downs. For me, Atlanta was a window onto a different way of life—and as time went on, it was a life I wanted.

  My take was that Dad used humor to cope with the general disarray that comes with a family spread across two states. Every night, he stayed up late to watch The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and when I was in town he let me watch, too. We’d sit together as Johnny tucked the world into bed with punch lines, and Dad would tap out a beat on his knee with one drumstick while laughing hysterically at some ridiculous joke made by Carson or his sidekick, Ed McMahon. Years later, married and with kids of my own, I still watch The Tonight Show. Jimmy Fallon is now the host, but the feeling is still the same. And as I watch and laugh and forget about all the stress that comes along with life in general, I realize why I think my father loved the show so much, or at least one of the reasons. For an hour and a half, he could turn off everything—the pain, the stress, the sadness, and the disappointment of a home broken in two—and we could laugh.

  Back in Asheville, my life and my weekends centered around church. Sure, we went to Sunday services with Dad in Atlanta at the historic, stained-glassed Peachtree Christian Church whenever we were in town, but when it came to my spiritual instruction, that was Mom’s domain. She was raised a staunch Southern Baptist and brought us up in the same tradition. As I see it, every denomination, religion, and ideology comes with its own pluses and minuses, as well as its own interpretations of what is thought to be best. I happened to be raised in what you might call a very “Thou Shalt” and “Thou Shalt Not” tradition where the truth, as outlined in Scripture, was black and white, with little room for gray in those days. Praying before meals was required and quite possibly even ensured us against poisoning. I wasn’t sure. Children disobeying their parents was akin to murder. Weekly church attendance was mandatory. Cursing, smoking, and drinking were what “unsaved” people did and most definitely off the table. And if a movie contained even the slightest off-color moment, Mom made us cover our eyes, which means I watched most movies through the cracks of my fingers. The world as I knew it back then revolved around two basic questions: “Are you a Christian?” and if so, “Are you good at it?”

  At age eight, with no doubt a tablespoon of loving pressure from my mom, I officially “said the prayer” and “accepted Jesus into my heart.” More than anything, my mother wanted to be sure her children were saved and going to heaven, and that proclamation was, for her and many others in the faith, the only marker of certainty. I have to admit that half of me did it for Jesus and the other half did it for my mom. “Clint’s become a Christian,” she announced to my stepdad as she prepared a budget-friendly snack of apples and peanut butter. That was our big celebration, and to this day, it’s still one of my favorite treats, and maybe also why I get so hungry whenever I talk about God.

  My mother raised us with love and Christianity, but her greatest dream and most heartfelt ambition were tied to her faith. As far back as I can recall, she wanted to be a Christian music star like Amy Grant or Sandi Patty. A love for music runs through both sides of my family: Mom was a singer, Dad a drummer, and my uncle David, Mom’s brother, was an accomplished singer/songwriter. In the early nineties, he even moved to Canada and started a band, Hemingway Corner, with two other guys. It was a success for over a decade. Mom spent much of my childhood trying to land a record deal. At home, she’d pluck away at the strings of her acoustic guitar for hours, writing her own songs with the hope of a breakthrough. On weekends, we’d follow her to any and every church service or revival where she might be allowed to grab a mic.

  When it came to finding that big break, Mom would do anything. Or almost anything. Late one Sunday evening, we drove into the backwoods of North Carolina to attend another revival, and I slept the whole way. By the time I awakened, Mom was climbing back in the van. As we drove away, I spotted a folding table in front of the church with boxes stacked on top of it.

  “What happened, Mom?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

  “Honey,” she said, a bit out of breath, “you know I don’t do snakes!”

  “Snakes?” I asked, shifting toward her to be sure I’d heard her correctly.

  “Yes, babe, snakes,” she confirmed as my stepdad gripped the wheel and barreled forward. “Those boxes on that table were full of them. We’re gone!”

  Serpents were just about the only thing that kept my mom from singing. It was all she’d ever wanted to do, and she definitely had great vocal talent. Though she never did achieve her ultimate dream, she never stopped trying. Even now, if you give that lady a mic, she’ll sing. And if it’s your birthday, get ready, ’cause you’re getting a song on your voicemail.

  * * *

  When I was around the age of ten, my granddad Donald became very ill. Bonnie and I were rushed from Asheville to Atlanta to visit him in the hospital before he died. Diabetes had not only ravaged his body but also robbed him of his disposition. Gone was the riotous laughter. In its place was a frail man who barely spoke. Two days after we saw him, he was gone too soon, at age sixty-five.

  Life was different after that day. An emptiness and sadness would hang over the Harp family for years to come. As much moving as I’d done in my life, it was hard to move on from this loss. I couldn’t imagine my life without Granddad Harp. Who was going to let me stay up late and watch wrestling and eat icing straight out of the container? Who was going to welcome me at the front door the way he did, with arms thrown wide and a big smile on his face? At first I was too stunned to cry, but once I saw my grandfather laid out in his casket, the dam broke. I leaned against my stepsister, Becky, and sobbed. And though I didn’t know it at the time, my mother watched me quietly from the back of the church. Despite the bitterness that had flowed between her and my father, she’d loved Donald, too, and had secretly showed up to say good-bye.

  The next year brought with it another big shift. The work my stepfather had been piecing together dried up, and when he could no longer make the rent, our landlord served us an eviction notice. Mom reached out to her parents that evening. Lying in bed with the door cracked, I overheard bits of the conversation.

  “Hi, Mom and Dad. . . . Yeah, not good. . . . We just don’t know what else to do. . . . Move in with you? Well . . . I mean . . . Yes.”

  While it was a pretty tough day for my mom and stepdad, as far as I was concerned, we couldn’t pack the moving van fast enough. There’s a scene in the movie Rudy where the head coach of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish football team finally asks Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger to play in a game. Rudy runs onto the field with arms outstretched, and all of South Bend stadium goes wild. That night I felt exactly like Rudy in that stadium. We were moving to Atlanta. My way out of Smallville. Yes, I hated to leave my friends and my school, and Asheville’s a beautiful place (and became an even greater town in the years that followed . . . to this day, I still visit there and love it), but I was already gathering up the scraps of my chaotic two-state existence and dreaming of a brand-new life. I knew t
hat greater things lay ahead for me. I was right.

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  Setting Up Shop

  My first shop was my backyard. My first tools were a miter saw, a circular saw, a hammer, and a drill. Everything I’ve built to this day started in that backyard, with those few tools. What I lacked, I eventually acquired. What I didn’t know, I learned. What I messed up, I fixed. But what I never started, I never saw come to life. I’m now surrounded by planers and jointers, lathes and sanders, but it all comes down to where and how you start. Throw it all on the table, take stock, set up shop—and begin.

  My mother’s father, Verner Martin, was a self-made man and entrepreneur. Back in the late 1950s, after returning from his post as a navy signalman in the Second World War, he started a shipping supply company called Martin Packaging in Atlanta, Georgia. With some inherited money of my grandmother’s, he not only started the business but he also had the foresight to invest in property: he bought up acres of land around Dunwoody and Sandy Springs, which would become some of the most sought-after areas on the outskirts of Atlanta as the years went by. On one large plot of that land, right on the edge of the riverbank, he built the Roost. From the foundation up, he constructed the entire thing by hand, with a small crew that even included my uncles.

  Granddad Martin was a builder. Whether that meant launching his own business, erecting the walls of the Roost, or constructing a table, he knew how to create something from nothing. After he purchased all that land, he began constructing custom homes on it. He had no formal training, but he knew how to figure things out. Once, when he decided his style would be colonial, he visited Virginia and studied the houses there, taking detailed notes and pictures and measurements. He then returned home to replicate the design. That was his training.

  In addition to his natural handyman skills, he also possessed a strong work ethic, a fierce independent streak, and an insatiable desire for exploration. If my granddad wasn’t building a house, he was flying down to Mexico to mine for gold and do God knows what else. I got those genes, the ones that led him to build things, strike out on his own, and chase damn near impossible dreams. While most everybody else around him had jobs they reported to daily, my granddad could wake up, get on his bulldozer, and work his own land. I loved that. And even as a boy, I knew I wanted that kind of freedom. I also knew I wanted to one day work with my hands.

  Verner taught me the value of hard work. He took me to his work sites and gave me jobs—small, often menial tasks, but they were my first real taste of responsibility. He bought me my first work boots and taught me how to swing a hammer, work heavy machinery, and properly mow the grass. Sometimes I’d drill holes through studs in the wall so he could run electrical and plumbing; other times, I’d hang insulation or drag 2x4s to wherever he needed them. I was basically his assistant whenever I was on the site. “Hey, cowboy,” he’d say when I was mowing the lawn, using the nickname he always called me, “you have to pick up all the sticks in the yard first.” I’d walk in parallel lines, end to end, to retrieve the branches before dragging the mower across the lawn. “Good job, cowboy,” he’d tell me, patting me on the shoulder with his heavy hands after inspecting my work. It wasn’t enough to do the job. It had to be done right.

  I learned from my granddad by trailing him. There I’d be, wide-eyed and eagerly at his side, whenever he stepped onto a jobsite or into his tool shop. Anything he told me in passing, I took to heart. “If you’re not careful when using an auger bit with a corded drill,” he once said, “you’ll break your wrist.” To this day, I don’t grab a corded drill without hearing him saying that. One afternoon when my stepdad was laying wood floors for my grandfather and I was giving a hand, Granddad came in and poured sand all over the floor. “Once everyone steps on the sand,” he explained, “that’ll naturally take away the softer wood, raise the grain a bit, and give the wood a beautiful look.” He was always teaching me and always encouraging me to get the job done right.

  The summer after we moved to the Roost from Asheville, my cousin Michael came down from his home in Ohio to live there, too. He was interning at the Carter Presidential Library, where my grandmother worked. At the time, I was eleven and Michael was ten years older. He was tall like his dad, my uncle Howard, and built pretty thick as well. He listened to edgy music, stayed up late, was incredibly intelligent, and watched movies I was never allowed to see. I was pretty stoked to be sharing my uncle Dean’s old room with him. After so many changes in my life, it felt good to be hanging out with family in a house that didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  One weekend, my grandfather noticed Michael and me just sitting around, and he decided to give us some work. “All right, here’s what I want,” he said. “Clean all the dog crap off the side porch over there. Make sure the yard is free and clear of all sticks so you can mow the lawn, Clint. And clean up the woodpile; basically just restack the whole thing, as it’s practically falling down. Get all that totally done. See you this afternoon.”

  Michael and I plugged away at the chores my granddad had left us. It was hot and humid, as summers usually were, especially when you lived right on a riverbank. The porch was a mess, and cleaning it up sucked. Michael and I picked up most of the crap and then moved on to the sticks in the yard. This job was a little bit more ambiguous. It was a big yard. I was used to doing this particular job on my own, and my methodical system of walking up and down the yard, combing the entire thing and picking up every last stick, was very effective. But working with my cousin, I found myself following him aimlessly around, as I was more interested in sticking by his side than anything else. I had only one boy cousin other than Michael at the time, and he was a newborn; otherwise, I was surrounded by girl cousins (whom I love dearly!) on both sides. Hanging out with a guy, especially one as cool as Michael, was something I didn’t want to miss out on.

  After strolling around half the lawn and picking up maybe half the sticks, we were exhausted. And yet, as much fun as I was having being with Michael, I was starting to get a little worried about our job performance. By the time we got to the pile of logs stacked on the side of the carport, Michael said, “Screw it, I’m done,” and went inside. To be fair, Michael already had a job, and quite frankly wasn’t looking to work on the weekends, and I really couldn’t blame him. But our grandfather couldn’t have cared less. As for me, I was dying for my grandfather to entrust me with more and more responsibility. So with the thought of my granddad’s disapproval in my mind, I stuck it out for a bit longer. Working my way around the logs, I stacked what I could on the already shaky pile and tried to make it look pretty. But then I heard music coming from inside the house. I thought, Wait, if he’s in there chilling out listening to music, why am I out here doing this? And just like that, I walked off the jobsite. Hanging out with Michael was just too much to pass up.

  Michael had the music blaring. He was into heavy metal at the time, and the volume was cranked up like I hadn’t heard before. He was holding a beer.

  “Hey, bud! Go grab yourself a Coke, man. That was a lot of work, you know? Yeah, grab a Coke. Shut it down.”

  Just as I cracked open the Coke can, I heard a faint sound like the opening and closing of a door.

  Verner was home. And he hadn’t just come home. My granddad had been there for a few minutes. When he pulled up, he’d decided to take a stroll around the yard to check out the job we’d done. By the time he walked inside, he was fuming. He laid into us like never before. It was humiliating. I had let the man down. And I knew it. Even before he got home, I knew I was wrong.

  Years later, as I sat with my cousin Michael, now a successful lawyer with his own practice, at his dad’s funeral, we dug back into the archive of memories. “You know,” Michael told me, “I’m old enough to remember when your mom and dad were married. Before you were born.”

  “That’s crazy!” I said. “You’re right, I’ve never thought about that.”

  “Yeah, I remember your dad. I liked h
im. He was funny. Did you know he used to work with Granddad?”

  My head could have exploded. My dad was a lot of things, but handy just wasn’t one of them, so the thought of him working with my grandfather—well, I couldn’t imagine it. Verner wasn’t one for funny business, while my dad walks into a room with the sole purpose of making people laugh.

  “Yeah, your dad used to help our grandfather out,” Michael continued. “So there was this one time when your dad and my dad were working for Granddad. He told them to do a few things and at the end of the day make sure they parked the truck in a certain spot and closed the fence. Your dad backed up the truck, and as he did, he hit the fence and knocked it out of whack. My dad had kinda had it with Granddad for other various reasons, so he told your dad to park the car on the street and worry about it later. The next day when Granddad found out, he laid into our fathers like you wouldn’t believe, kind of like he laid into us that summer. I don’t believe your dad ever worked for him after that. And that’s when my family decided to move away from Atlanta.”

  Michael’s story made me see my dad, my uncle, and my cousin in a whole new light—and myself as well. That day, I learned a little bit more about who I was, the parts of me that are like my dad and the parts that are like my granddad. I realized that it was up to me to choose which part of myself to express. Ever since, when I have a job to do, I can hear my grandfather’s voice saying, “Clint, do it right the first time, so you don’t have to go back and do it again.”

  We ended up finishing the job our granddad asked us to do. It was no doubt humiliating having to go back and do it again, the very thing he taught me not to do. But I guess there’s a lesson in there as well. If you do have to go back and do it again . . . do it. And do it well.