Swirling Sawdust and the Smell of My Father Written by Michael Zenner

My Father Gerhard was an engineer, but his passion was woodworking. I loved hanging around him when he worked as I LOVED the smell of fresh sawdust. When I was young, my favorite things were to go to the lumber yard with him and he would let me rifle through the scrap bin of cull wood. I would pick out scraps and imagine what I could repurpose them into. It was special. I still do that today. My Dad was also a rather special guy. He had a very rough life, living through and escaping out of war-torn Europe to set up family roots in America. He seemed comfortable in America, eventually becoming an American Citizen. Sometimes he would just have this grin of satisfaction on his face as if to say, “I made it out of that mess, the rest of life is gravy.”

That said, he was from another culture and world, and in High School, he might as well have been from Mars to me as we seemingly had nothing in common anymore. What does this immigrant know of American youth anyways? We grew apart, and I know that hurt him, but teenage boys always think they are wiser to the world.

When I was in university, my parents moved from NY back to our roots here in Arizona. That was well over 20 years ago. My Dad had retired and was doing woodworking every day outside in his new backyard woodshop. I would come and visit my parents, and before I knew it, I was coming over every day after classes to hang out in his woodshop and marvel at his creations he was making. I soon joined in. We found a new bond we never had before. We had fun, and Dad took great joy and pleasure in cursing at me while telling me all the things I was doing wrong. He took great pride in his scolding, teaching me his master skills. To this day, I can frequently hear him in my subconscious mind bellowing at me in his heavy accented voice, “Ah Michael! Measure twice, cut once. Stupid!” Not politically correct these days but accepted and effective back then.

My Father got cancer. It was a Thanksgiving Day, I remember that. I was numb; however, we kept meeting at the shop and doing our woodworking. We didn’t speak of it, “IT” was too awkward; we just discussed the next project, both accepting the denial – for a while. He ended up in the hospital and would ask me constantly if I had finished the last project we were working on – an octagonal picnic bench. I told him that I had, but moreover that I had used his shop tools to make an intricate carved custom wood sign that I had been envisioning. When he eventually saw the carved wood signs I had made, he teared up and said, “Michael, I could never ever make something like that!” I was taken back and then realized how genuine he was, and it dawned on me, in fact, what I actually had made. It was a special moment that I will always remember and have never shared it with anyone until now. My Father once sat me down and showed me our family tree going back six generations and how it was populated with carpenters and woodworkers. I guess it’s deep in our Zenner veins. But that day, the Zenner Family Woodworking Torch seemingly got handed to me, and he knew it.