Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (23 page)

After we finished that cabin, another friend wanted a yoga studio built in her yard in west LA. By this point, I’d discovered, mainly in Pasadena, the architecture of Greene and Greene, who were contemporaries of Frank Lloyd Wright in the early twentieth century, and I became completely besotted with their style, which adds some sexy Asian curves to the Craftsman or Mission aesthetic. My design for the “Yoga Hutch” emulated their designs, as near as I could afford, anyway, and Marty and I were really enjoying our education as we continued to challenge each other to execute more complex designs and joinery.

One day, as I was chopping out a humongous mortise with a framing chisel, I realized that this huge mortise-and-tenon joint that I was creating to join the posts and beams together was also one of the bedrock joints used in antique furniture. I thought, “Hey, if we can build this structure, then surely we can build a table, which is just a smaller-scale version of a post-and-beam cabin.” Another harbinger of the impending change in my carpentry style was instigated by a film job that I got during the construction of the Yoga Hutch. I had to leave my job site for a few months while I worked on the film, which was nothing short of an asshole move. I left this mostly finished building under construction in the backyard of these nice people while I traipsed around shooting a film. Not the coolest move. I promised myself from there on out, I would only build pieces in a workshop, where I could give a client a safe “lead time,” so that I could complete their commissions when I was able to, without leaving a mess lying around their property.

I started driving Megan crazy because everywhere we went I would be on the floor, underneath the old tables, looking at the joinery. I was obsessed with the tricks employed by furniture makers over the years to ensure a structure’s solidity. A contractor that I knew saw what was happening and recognized my symptoms. He gave me a few issues of
Fine Woodworking
magazine and said, “If you want to get into this stuff, this is all you need,” and sure enough I got a subscription and was just swept away down a river of knowledge upon which I am still paddling madly. I had guzzled all of the Kool-Aid, reading voraciously of woodworking, and then beyond to boatbuilding.

If one is bewitched by woodworking (as I am) and one begins a program of study (as I have), then one must first assay the classic joinery—the mortise-and-tenon, the dovetail, the sliding dovetail, the mitre joint, the box joint, the finger joint. Eventually everything breaks down into simple techniques. The entire discipline of working with wood really only comes down to a handful of tools and methods with which you can do damn near anything with wood in three-dimensional space, to the extent of the limitations of your material. Once you master those simple tools and techniques, you can then craft toward whatever item your predilections steer you to. You might want to build bread boxes or bicycles or chess pieces or sailboats, and you can!

I was immediately and powerfully drawn to the work of George Nakashima, a Japanese American woodworker who popularized his table style consisting of a single slab of a walnut tree with the natural edges retained, resting upon different sculptural varieties of a trestle base. These tables look equally at home in an ancient temple or a modern-architectural house, because the slab of wood itself is the work of art. My first attempt was an homage to his Frenchman’s Cove table, which his daughter, Mira, has been producing since she took over the Nakashima operation after her dad passed away. She maintains a very charismatic company in Pennsylvania, if you want to see some superb American work.

The more I learn about woodworking, the more I am convinced that I don’t ever want to decorate my pieces with a lot of man-made gingerbread. Many virtuoso craftspersons work in many styles, and they do some mind-blowing things with solid wood, in the Federal style, Art Nouveau, Victorian, and others. Not so much for me. I think it’s all about creating a piece of furniture that allows the wood itself to draw the focus. What Ma Nature has wrought in the grain and color and figure of a given piece of tree is generally much more magical to me than any dentil edge I might adhere to it. Finally finishing the wood, especially with a hand-rubbed oil finish, after careful scraping and sanding, simply reveals the story that particular tree has been getting ready to tell us for decades or sometimes centuries. Usually the story is full of twists and surprises and breathtaking beauty, but hopefully the story does not include a chapter about a lag bolt that someone screwed into the tree eighty years ago, only to be rediscovered by your expensive table-saw blade.

I knew I needed a shop space but could not find anything remotely appropriate and/or affordable, until one day I was helping my friend Daniel Wheeler, a high-end sculptor and maker of things, to cast Pat Roberts’s supine form in plaster so that Daniel could sculpt a Formica-faceted mountain range in the rough shape of Pat’s carcass (an amazing piece of loving work—the sculpture, not Pat’s bod, although that’s not too shabby either). My motorcycle needed a jump, so I went to the neighboring warehouse spaces looking for some jumper cables (I’ve never driven without cables since—and neither should you), and I found them at a large photography studio. The forty-by-eighty-foot white room was very barren, and the photographer told me he knew right where the jumper cables were because he was moving!

“Oh, really?” I replied, and immediately took down the landlord’s information.

“Yeah,” he said, “I used to do a killer business shooting the cover photos for VHS porn movies.”

“You don’t say?” I replied, looking at the expanse in a new light indeed. Were my boots lightly sticking to the concrete floor?

“Oh, yeah, the money was great,” he said, “because the photo on the box is what gets your rental at the video store. Think about it. But the video store is dying. I can’t afford to stay.” He then toured me around the huge room, upon the walls of which were still poster-size versions of some of the photos he had accomplished there in this empty, dusty warehouse. There was a sandy beach scene, complete with water, and a snowy ski-bunny hillside, with pine trees and a cabin, and on and on, every photo with a scantily clad sexpot in a coy pose of one sort or another.

“Well, I’m sure things will work out,” I said, licking my chops—no, not at the Chesty Morgans, but at the potential shop space!

I got the place and, with Marty’s help, turned it into a woodworker’s dream shop, where I still ply my troth to this day. Mr. McClendon and I both owe an undeniable debt of gratitude to
Fine Woodworking
magazine for the expert tutelage it has given us over the years. We have read that magazine cover to cover every month, completely infatuated even with the classified ads in back. I could tell you where to get tiger maple in Virginia or what gentleman in Ohio will tune up your antique molding planes for you. I’m the same way with
WoodenBoat
magazine, which is about as delicious as a periodical can get.

When Marty and his winning bride, Jennifer, were blessed with a bun in the oven, I was able to realize a dream that had been percolating for a while thanks to the
WoodenBoat
classifieds. A fellow named Warren Jordan had plans available to purchase for the “Baby Tender,” which is a lapstrake-planked rowboat built to the scale of a cradle. It even hangs on custom davits! You can bet your sweet caboose I built that little boat for Marty and Jen with a hull of Alaskan yellow cedar and black walnut trim. Witnessing the hull of a boat take shape upon your bench is like spinning a Corvette from wool. Thar be witchcraft afoot in the boatshop, sure, now!

We continued to leapfrog off of each other, attempting projects ever increasing in difficulty. Ours was a beautiful partnership, fueled by the sounds of Kool and the Gang, the Gap Band, Parliament, and Funkadelic. Sadly for me, Marty was called back to Wisconsin to merely run an entire college theater department, the Lord’s work, but we both still love to send each other pictures of our most recent sweet joinery. I could never have learned all that I have so far without his collaboration. In the last year, our circle of life has gone full-on “Hakuna Matata,”
as we have both realized the crazy sex dream of writing articles for
Fine Woodworking! Who shot who in the what, now?! Check out
FW
number 231 to see McClendon’s Greene and Greene–style bed in American cherry, but don’t look at it unless you’re prepared to BLOW YOUR LOAD.

Hooked on boats but good, I then had the chance to build my first canoe,
Huckleberry
, and shoot a how-to video of the process for Ted Moores and Joan Barrett of Bear Mountain Boats in Peterborough, Ontario, the premier company for all of your canoe-building needs. Ted literally wrote the book (
Canoecraft
) on building cedar-strip canoes and kayaks, a manual from which I learned to find my ass with both hands and many more techniques even more efficacious. Jimmy Diresta shot the video and earned himself my second canoe,
Lucky Boy
, as part of his recompense. These canoes are designed by Ted and Steve Killing, and I will reiterate that when the hull begins to reveal its voluptuous curves to the builder, boners there be, and that goes for the ladies as well. Experiencing a problem with depression? Ennui got you down? Build a goddamn canoe, and trust me, you will be happy as a clam at high tide. Most of the work is done with hand tools, which means you get to crank your tunes for hours of pleasure. Check out any Tom Waits or
Petra
Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out
. Iron and Wine is amazing on the spokeshave. I also played a lot of Supreme Music Program, a band fronted by Megan Mullally, whose three albums are like fully formed novels. Lady got pipes, y’all.

Even the paddle of the canoe can prove to be an immensely satisfying undertaking and a place I often suggest that beginners choose as their starting point. It’s great training in the block plane and the spokeshave, and there is nothing so gratifying as crafting a handled tool from wood. To date I have carved a spoon and fork, several canoe paddles, a life-size replica mahogany axe, and a baseball bat. The moment of enchantment occurs when the item is nearing completion and you are sanding the shaft or handle. You can begin to feel the work that this tool will perform, whether it be rapping out a triple or paddling against a brisk current. I can tell you from many hours of experience that propelling a wooden canoe that you have built with a paddle also made by your hand carries so much more than a sense of pride. One begins to tap into the primal ingenuity that strings us together with countless generations of our clever forebears who collectively did all of the long division for us when it came to sailing and aerodynamics and, well, every sort of simple machine, really.

When I paddle across the big water, I feel a direct kinship with my ancestors, in that we have both cheated the river. With the chair and the table, we outsmart gravity. With the boat, we outsmart water and wind and distance. Lest we get too cocky, though, as soon as we (I) start to think this way, Ma Nature slaps us (me) with a squall and dumps my canoe over a submerged tree trunk, reminding me that behind that spokeshave there still stands a jackass.

Romantic Love

E
ngage in romantic love. It truly makes life worth living. Romance affords you the opportunity to do a lot of “giving,” which I believe I have read is said to be better than “receiving.” Trust me, once you give of your time and care to your loved one, you’ll be doing a-plenty of receiving, if you follow me. If you don’t follow me, I’m saying you’ll be having a bunch of oral sex performed upon you.

One might examine the example of a triumphant marriage set for me by my mom and dad and determine that I was hopelessly lost to a life of romance from the outset. I’m not talking the saccharine stuff of Disney films. I’m referring to down-to-earth everyday give-and-take. A bouquet of sweet Williams gathered along the fencerow on the way home to Mom. Making sure Dad got the bone with the marrow at dinner (which he shared with me—good man). Little, commonplace gestures that say, “I’m thinking of you.” The reason some may see my sappy side as a liability is that when faced with a decision, I will damn near always choose the more romantic (foolish) choice.

To wit: A mere couple of months into our courtship, my wife, Megan, took a major plunge by coming to my family’s annual fishing week in remote northwest Minnesota. I was pretty nervous, as the accommodations are pleasant but spartan, and Megan would be meeting most of my family for the first time. These cabins are for fisherfolk and hunters, not vacationing legends of the entertainment world, so I wanted to go the extra mile or three to make it nice for my new lady. We arrived to a beautiful afternoon, light on the mosquitoes, and were happy to see the gang. I suggested we take the pontoon boat out across the lake to get a romantic view of the sunset. Megan agreed, so we snagged a bottle of wine and puttered away. For those who don’t know, a pontoon (aka “party barge”) is a good-size rectangular floor, say ten feet by eighteen feet, floating upon two pontoon floats, like two long cylindrical skis, with seating for twelve or so, and a nice-size but not overly macho motor (thirty-five to fifty horsepower). It’s the minivan of the lake.

There is a retractable awning on the pontoon for shade, rendering the vessel a very comfortable place from which to catch one’s limit, or just enjoy a cold can of suds while taking in some of the cheese curds one collected on one’s way through Wisconsin and admire the majestic scenery. Or, say, shut down the motor, drift, and soak up the sunset with your new crazily foxy bombshell. Traditionally, and in order to comply with the law, a boater will turn on small lights at dusk so that other watercraft can see him/her and thereby prevent collisions from occurring. I understand the prudence in this rule, so I flipped on the “parking lights” and we had a glass of wine and discussed our burgeoning feelings, as well as my brother-in-law’s penchant for the black Russian cocktail, while the sun set beautifully over the pine forest in which the cabin resort sat. If I do say so myself, this was a pretty devastating atmosphere of amour in which I had festooned our evening. Romeo-wise, I was looking pretty savvy.

By the time the breeze picked up and blew us directly into the far shore opposite our dock, it was fully dark and time to head in for some late-night snacks and euchre. When I turned the key to fire up the motor, the silence that greeted me was one of the most violent sounds I’d ever not heard. I knew immediately what had befallen us, thanks to a storied history of misunderstanding motor vehicles throughout my youth. I’d left the maritime equivalent of the parking lights turned on without the motor running (silence is romantic), and the battery had been drained past the capability of answering our ignition needs.

This was very bad. The lake was completely dark. A brisk breeze was blowing us against the shore directly across the lake from our destination. There was nary a light as far as the eye could see, as this whole side of the lake was a preserve used by the Boy Scouts, who were fully absent at this time. In short, I had no choice but to attempt to compel the pontoon the mile and a half back across the water. But how? I screamed a few times at the top of my lungs for my brother, who was no doubt five beers into a euchre game back at the cabin. Christ almighty.

I searched clumsily through the storage areas beneath the bench seats and burst into (inward) tears of thanks when I came upon a pathetic, warped canoe paddle. It was incredibly lightweight and curved so severely that if I had a pair of them I could have made a kick-ass rocking chair with some exciting action. But given the circumstances, I had never seen a more beautiful wooden implement in all of my life. I proceeded to sit on the front center of the pontoon and set to paddling for all I was worth (not much at that moment) for about three hours, directly into the wind, while Megan poured swigs of wine into my mouth and sang a progression of songs into my ear, songs of love like Randy Newman’s “Real Emotional Girl” and “Marie”; Tom Waits’s “Johnsburg, Illinois” and “Ruby’s Arms”; and her showstopping version of “Danny Boy.” The bees of love came swirling around me in a swarm of passion, coalescing in the air before me like a large cartoon fist before soundly bludgeoning me into servitude.

I couldn’t stop and rest because of the severe headwind, so I set my jaw and paddled like a Phoenician, literally guiding myself by the Big Dipper until we floated safely into the dock. Standing on the dock, spent, under the stars, my then-girlfriend told me she loved me. Using my gifts of stubbornness and mulish stamina, I had achieved a romantic triumph that I might hope to repeat in our years of bliss, but preferably by less taxing means. When we arose the next morning, my family was disappointingly nonplussed at the recounting of my Homeric episode, refusing to believe that I hadn’t killed the battery on purpose to provide myself a juicy opportunity to impress my lady. That hurt, but not nearly as much as what happened next. My dad took me out to the pontoon and showed me where the top pops off the motor and one could use a pull rope to start it up, in case the battery should die. The Offermans, ladies and gentlemen.

* * *

I
nexplicably, but thankfully, Megan stuck with me. It wasn’t long before Cupid sat me down and said, “You know what’s up, right?” and I said, “Yes. Your work here is replete and seamless, and I will answer it.” Megan and I had openly discussed the plan to one day marry, so I didn’t feel terribly sweaty about making a proposal happen at first. After some water had passed under the bridge, however, it became clear that I should get the ball rolling, maybe after a year together. One day we were walking down Beverly Boulevard in LA, and I was pulling my Swiss army knife out of my pocket, as is my habit, and I also accidentally pulled out a quarter, which went tinkling onto the sidewalk. As I abruptly took a knee to retrieve the coin and replace it in my pocket, inadvertently striking the exact posture and gesture of a man traditionally proposing marriage, even down to the hand in my pocket, Megan facetiously said, “Oh my, god, honey!” and I, ever game, played along as though I had awkwardly lost the ring. “Oh, uh . . . ,” I stammered. “I was just—I think I lost. A nickel.”

Hilarious! We laughed long and hard and pressed on to our destination, while in the back of my mind a switch had been thrown. The placard beneath that switch read, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.” (I don’t know who writes the copy for these switches of mine, but they need to update their vernacular, bro.) The story of my “muffed proposal” made the rounds, and everyone agreed that it was a terrific chuckle. The foundation of the humor was to be found in our confidently solid romance. Acquaintances would sometimes exhibit alarm that I might “play so fast and loose” with a lady’s expectations, but I would never risk hurting Megan’s feelings, and she knew that, so the subject remained ripe for further ribaldry.

About this time, I was getting incredibly excited about a trip to Paris that we had coming up. Around the set of
Will & Grace
, I mentioned that it might be even funnier to extend my run of proposal comedy in the City of Lights. Without missing a beat, the costume designer (the sublime Lori Eskowitz) handed me a selection of gorgeous engagement rings of the costume jewelry variety, which I gratefully and surreptitiously pocketed.

Cut to: Gay Paree! Holy shit, you guys, there is a city in France called Paris, directly south of Amiens; it’s on the Seine, and you should totally go check it out. We were absolutely swept away by the romance and beauty and history of that magnificent burg. Paris is indeed for lovers. We thrilled at buying crepes with butter and sugar from a street vendor and then just sojourning about the arrondissements (neighborhoods arranged in a spiral pattern by number), soaking in the architecture, the people, the museums, the food, the flowers, and I was especially freaked out by the Art Deco designs of the Paris Metro stops done by Hector Guimard at the turn of the twentieth century. So much so that I did some homework and sought out a couple of apartment buildings he had also assembled. Such beautiful and highly crafted work!

We were high on the hill of Montmartre visiting the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, then just swooning at the majestic views of the city from this, the highest point. At the base of the ancient stone steps leading to the church, I suddenly dropped to my knees again and this time pulled out a pretty bitchin’ diamond ring. I launched into “Megan, you know I love you”—but my words were cut short when I bobbled the ring and it flipped a few times in the air before neatly dropping into the ancient iron gutter grate over which I was kneeling. Ever willing, Megan did not bat an eyelash, saying, “Oh my god, Nick, what was that?”

“Um, nothing, I—I mean, I just dropped a twenty-centime piece. . . .”

Terrific. We had a nice laugh and then continued touring that historic hilltop, which once housed the studios of artists like Picasso, Dali, Modigliani, Monet, van Gogh, Mondrian . . . not a bad lineup. I’m telling you, Paris is totally worth it; I don’t know why nobody ever talks about it. It’s in France, everybody.

Some of the finest gustatory experiences in the world can also be found in this foxy bitch of a European capital. We got some good tips from friends on some places to dine, including an incredibly romantic café on the left bank of the Seine. So romantic that it felt like we were sucking on one string of spaghetti together in
Lady and the Tramp
, and our postdinner stroll along the Seine was a dream. We crossed the river on the resplendent Pont Neuf bridge (so pretty—why has no one used it in a movie?! Woody Allen, please check it out!), which, thinking back on it now, was like an unrealizable fantasy of what I’d always thought a love trip should be. In the middle of our crossing, I took Megan by her two arms and placed her just so. Then I backed up about five steps to take a gallant, rolling start into my kneeling, but as I began to step to her, I unfortunately tripped and barreled straight into the bridge’s side wall, catching the rail soundly in my gut, which folded me over the wall, sending the impressive diamond ring in my hand catapulting into the night air. Flipping cinematically end-over-end, catching the lights of the night city in its several expertly cut facets, the ring plummeted, as if in slow-motion, disappearing into the murky waters of the Seine. Can you even imagine how embarrassing this was for me?! Two incredibly expensive diamonds lost, not to mention I’d twice made a complete botch job of proposing to my devastatingly beautiful girlfriend. Megan and I laughed again, sincerely enjoying the now-running gag, but not so much as to take away from the sheer bliss of our romantic evening.

Near the end of our trip, after we had visited the Louvre Museum extensively and I had successfully photographed myself shirtless amongst the centaurs in the sculpture garden (those Louvre security guards are no joke—hey, somebody should totally set a movie there! It would be cool!), we figured that no trip to Paris would be complete without ascending la Tour Eiffel. It was later in the evening, which turned out to be a good move, as the daytime tourist crowds can be a bit much around the Tower. We rode to the top in an elevator, and it’s really about as breathtaking as you might imagine, both for its sweeping views and (for me anyway, probably more than milady) the engineering and scale of this one-thousand-foot tower. I do love to see how we humans put things together. As you might have guessed, since comedy does tend to come in threes, I was feeling so swept away by this romantic pinnacle that I dropped to one knee and casually dropped the third and largest ring through the grated floor of the Eiffel Tower, where it plummeted some 900 feet to the park below (never fear, I had carefully scouted the area to ensure I wouldn’t accidentally plant it in someone’s cranium when it fell).

Megan was gratifyingly entertained by my buffoonery, something I continue to appreciate to this day. This brought to a close my famous hat trick of bungled proposals in the most passion-inducing city I’ve laid eyes on. I can’t believe nobody knows about Paris. You should Google it!

These japes were good, clean fun, but the onus was rather on me now. If I was willing to joke so freely about the subject, then it was only appropriate that I man up and deliver the real goods at some point. Make my leavings or get out of the water closet, as it were. Some months later I managed to pull off the real thing in London, on another lovely vacation. I had secured a custom ring (with my paycheck from acting in a Fox pilot), made with a modest but beautiful stone in a “gypsy setting,” a favored detail, which I had previously ferreted out of my beloved. We were walking through Regent’s Park and we came upon Queen Anne’s Rose Garden (which I had secretly selected from several proposed locations by our local guide). As we strolled along hand in hand, I shit you not, all of the insects were buzzing and courting in the air all around us. The birds and chipmunks were giggling and fluttering about, and the ducks in the stream were coupled off, engaged in some heavy petting. As I slowed to a stop upon a little wooden bridge and pulled “my insurance” from my pocket (a heart-shaped box carved in walnut, which hinged open to reveal the ring perfectly inset) and dropped to one knee, all of nature seemed to begin copulating around us, beating the very air into a syrup of carnal ecstasy. Pairs of pretty sparrows furiously sixty-nining pinwheeled through the air like feathery fellating fireworks. The calla lilies were nodding approval at me as they began to gently butt-fuck one another. In hindsight, I may not have been completely right, as my heart was beating out of my chest. Something magical was certainly in the air. Spoiler alert: SHE SAID YES. The best part of my blissful life was now promised to continue, by mutual agreement between myself and the cause of said bliss.