Four shades of Stan
Among the many things we have in common – an appreciation for fine teacups, champagne, cod cakes and letter-writing, to name a couple – me and my grandma both clearly have a thing for carpenters. She married one, the man whose hands built the house my mother grew up in. I hopelessly fell in love with another, up in a tiny cabin in Alaska. Talking about it the other day, we agreed there was something about a man handling wood and building things we really liked. “All that hard work,” my grandma said. “The smell of sawdust,” I said.
Yesterday, in Kitchener, Ontario, I met yet another carpenter who stole my heart. This one was called Stan, Stan Valenta. I know his name because he gave me his card. On one side it read “STAN’S ENTREPRISES. Lawn Furniture & Garden Sheds. Custom Cutting & Fabricating. Wooden Stakes. Carpenter Saw Horses. Supplier to Habitat for Humanity.” On the other was a map of a section of Kitchener Waterloo, with an arrow pointing to Stan’s Enterprises, next to some railroad tracks.
“I’m a retired carpenter now”, Stan said, still very much looking like one in his tan Carhartts, heavy checkered flannel shirt and work boots. “My doctor says I’m only allowed one cup of coffee per day but if you promise to keep quiet, I might just go and grag another,” he said lurching up and nimbly making his way toward the coffee table.
“I won’t be telling nobody, Stan,” I said.
We talked about carpentry, and the kinds of things he liked to build, and the places where he’d worked after leaving his native Saskatchewan, a long long time ago. He told me about trying to get work in Quebec, in the 1970s, and being told his carpentry certifications were no good there. I told him about my thing for carpenters.
“Lucky for you you’re saying that today,” Stan said. “Today the boys don’t have to go deaf from working in front of them machines anymore.” He said he’d worked for years for a company in town that made cabinets, and that a lot of his work involved feeding pieces of wood through a planer. “You know, we didn’t have… hearing protection back then. Our ears would ring all night when we’d get home, but we didn’t know better,” he said. “We went back and did the same thing all over again the next day.”
“Now I can’t hear so good,” Stan said, tapping on his hearing aid with his thick hand.
“Carpenter, no carpenter… girls aren’t so crazy about that let me tell you.”