I have already announced that I was taking up carving again. As a result I had to think about the cramped quarters in our apartment and where I would pursue my craft.  This brought to mind a contraption that I had built almost thirty years ago, concocted out of an old bridge table and pieces of thin plywood scraps.

You see, I was a puppeteer in those days.  I had built a theater-less show of short human marionettes that would hang from a framework of pipes.  They would be in the open and when called upon, I would bring them forward and have them speak their parts while I manipulated arms and legs – all in the open.  To accomplish this I had to become one of the actors in story. My inspiration for this show was a radio program I recorded and had the voices of Zero Mostel, Nancy Walker, Sam Jaffe, Boris Carnovsky and others accompanied by flute interludes.

Now, the story was about the “Wise Men of Chelm” and told about a town filled with fools who lived in Chelm, a shtetl somewhere in Eastern Europe in the 18^th or 19^th Century.  Here is how the story went.  An Angel, Ruchele was flying over Chelm carrying in one hand a bag of wise souls and the other a bag of foolish souls. I attached her to a pole and flew her across the open stage with the bags prominently displayed. She didn’t see this tree that ripped the bag of foolish souls dropping them down over the people of Chelm.

I took the part of Mendel, the Bookseller and needed a prop, a box to bring out on stage introducing the show.  The box had faux books made out of paper and was very light.  I introduced the characters and put the box down, center stage but up-ended it so four folding legs could descend and it became a desk.  Later, the legs would be folded and the box upended so it could be used as a Bar attended by a barkeep. The main character, the Melamed (teacher), would stop, sit at the desk and have a drink at the bar at different points in the story. The plot was about the Melamed who was sent out by his wife to buy a goat for milk to make blintzes.

The prop worked as I wanted it to and I have kept it all these years since and it traveled to Florida with me.  I couldn’t throw it away until I got the idea that it could be converted into a carving table and proceeded to take it apart.  I then realized that it was very old, shaky and not very well built and would not hold the weight of my hands and arms working with tools and pieces of wood. It worked then, but not now. Reluctantly, I picked up all the pieces I had created by breaking it down and threw them away.  It was a wrenching experience for I had made it, it had worked and I had great satisfaction in a job well done.  But time moves on and there are new projects waiting for my attention.