“I grew up on the outskirts of Birmingham. The Japanese surrendered on my 5th birthday. I had a Tom Sawyer childhood. I taught Wilt Chamberlain how to do a yoga headstand, I was at the King March in D.C. and lived off the land in a teepee in a commune in Arkansas. I am also licensed and can marry people. It has been quite a life and I never thought I would get this old. I am a cancer survivor and have had several surgeries. Physically I am a mess but I feel like I am 18 years old.

My father died when I was 18 and I got into college on a bet in a poker game. I barely got out of high school with a D minus average and went to Alabama College, which is now the University of Montevallo. The school was going broke and they had to take in men for the first time and I was in the first class that had men. It was 14-to-1 women to men so our odds were pretty good.

I was a redneck and had read only a couple of books until I went to college, then I got interested in religion and philosophy and Plato. I was exposed to so much and I loved it all. I went to Tuskegee and met up with a group of black students and ate dinner and talked. That changed me. College and interesting people changed me, too. I was in Montgomery for the end of the Selma march and saw the big show with Peter, Paul and Mary, they were my heroes. I was stupid and bragging about singing protest songs and people got after me when I got back to Birmingham and I lost my teaching job.

After Sputnik, there was a lot of money in science and they paid me to get a masters degree in the teaching field. Instead of going to graduation, I went to Woodstock and didn’t come back. I have a couple of masters degrees, one was in radiation hygiene which was nuclear safety. I taught science for several years. For a while, I was the first and only white teacher at Blount High School.

When I was a kid, my father came home with weird stuff. We raised rabbits and quail and parakeets. One time he came home with a pool table from the pool hall. He also came home with a print shop and we had a whole print shop in our basement. He had a jigsaw and we made Christmas decorations out of plywood that we hung on top of the house. I got interested in building things.

When I was living in Arkansas, there were some persimmon and black walnut trees and I had a jointer. When the limbs fell off the trees, I played with them and whittled them down. The thought of getting a sawmill turned me on. I appreciate the tree and what you can do with it. I have been thinking about teaching a class to help other people learn how to make things out of wood. I am not as strong as I used to be and I have to trick people into helping me.

These are from a tree in Daphne and will turn into coffee tables. That board is beautiful, it is a piece of red oak and a special sawing technique brought the flecks out. One of the tree services lets me know about the trees and wood they find. A lot of the high-end builders let me know, too. Cherry is my favorite, but I like them all. Black walnut and magnolia are a lot of fun and I make benches, tables, and beds. I try to use all pieces of a tree. I love the feel of smooth wood. When it is right, God it feels so good.”

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