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Sentimental Keepsake Value Of An Old Piece Of Wood

By Terry Weber

This may sound strange to you but I can get sentimental over a piece of wood. As I look at a specific piece of wood and think about it, it can actually bring tears to my eyes. Its true.

I can almost hear your comments about what I just said. You’re thinking: “Terry, you are just a softy – you probably even cried the first time you saw the Dumbo movie!” Not so.

During my last 78 years I’ve done some pretty macho things: As a teenager I was a rough, tough Bos’n’s Mate in the US Navy. Later I got into making cold sales calls while trying to make enough money for my young family to survive. Believe you me, that first sales call I’d ever made in my life was a hard thing for me to do and it took a lot of guts! Later, I learned how to fly a Piper Cub airplane off of a grass strip runway. Flying with the instructor aboard was fun. But then one day, after I’d made a series of good landings, my instructor said: “Terry, I’m outta here, you take her up, go around the pattern and land all by yourself. You don’t need me anymore.” I can tell you, that first solo flight was scary! Then, when I was 70 I achieved another of my dreams – I learned to fly a hang glider. What great fun it is to bank and turn and soar with no engine, just like an eagle!

I tell you these things, not to brag but to let you know it can take an awful lot to make a rugged guy like me - cry. So why do I cry over a piece of wood? Here’s why.

Years ago in the mid 40’s, my family had a 34 foot wooden sailboat that was built around 1900. Her name was: Severn. We sailed her on the Chesapeake, on Delaware Bay and many other cruises up and down the Atlantic coast. We all had a wonderful time as we sailed on her, together as a family. Eventually she leaked so much we had to scrap her. One day, many years later. I drove to the boat yard to see if the old Severn was still there. I found her off in the corner of the yard, but by this time she was just a rotting hulk. Then, for old time’s sake I picked up a piece of the wood from her transom and took it home with me and stored it in my garage. That was my first piece of sentimental wood.

Another time, after my favorite Uncle Earl’s funeral, I asked if I could have one of his crutches to remember him by. In his childhood, my uncle had been a victim of Polio, infantile paralysis. He spent most of his life on those crutches while working hard and later becoming a millionaire. I added that crutch to my garage’s collection of sentimental wood.

Back in ’69 I built (from plans), in my cellar, a 14’ Piver catamaran sailboat out of 1/8” plywood with Sitka Spruce ribs and spars. My sons and daughters and I had great fun sailing that catamaran for many exciting hours out on New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay. Eventually she fell apart. But, you guessed it - I saved some of the wood from the Catspaw and added it to that ever-growing sentimental wood collection in my garage.

I’ve saved that pile of sentimental wood for many years with no real purpose in mind. Recently, one of my sons has learned to use his woodworker’s lathe to make pens out of wood. So, on an impulse, I gave Dave some wood from the Old Severn, my uncle’s crutch and some Sitka Spruce from our now trashed catamaran and asked him to use the wood to make some Sentimental Wood pens for me.

My plan is to give those pens to my kids and other family members. Together, we can hold and look at and use those Sentimental Wood pens and - remember. Then, as we think back to the events the wood in those pens brings to mind, all of us tough old birds may even shed a few tears – together.

TOP PICTURE: Shows a wide variety of woods made into ball point pens.

CENTER PICTURE: Shows a pen made from the transom of my Dad's old wooden sloop (Severn)

BOTTOM PICTURE: These three pens were made from Diamond Willow wood (Diamond Willow only grows in Alaska & Canada). I picked up some Diamond Willow wood when we were in Alaska in 1997- pens remind me of the great time we had while there.

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