Dad's Workshop

I stepped into the upholstery shop on Main Street in Wakefield, Rhode Island and was catapulted back some decades into our family’s basement workshop in Montgomery, New York where my father labored on weekends and evenings at his private upholstery jobs. He worked 51 weeks a year for an interior decorator in a back-room workshop that looked much like our basement. There were big cutting tables in both shops, and wooden horses to elevate the furniture off the floor.

The workshop of my memory was more organized than the shop I walked into yesterday. Below the cutting table was a shelf where long rolls of fabric were stacked. At one end of the shelf were sample books with more fabric cut in swatches of multiple colors of a single pattern. I coveted those sample books and never tired of flipping the heavy pages reviewing how a change of color would tilt a pattern toward or away from my developing visual taste.

My father organized his tools and materials, and I suppose that I have inherited that innate sense of order—a place for everything and everything in its place. The varied-size and purpose hammers and screw drivers were visible hanging from clips along the wall under the high window that peeked out at ground level. Shelves elbowing into one corner held boxes of larger nails and the tacks that he consumed in great numbers, almost literally. He tossed a handful into his mouth when he was in his most efficient mode. He would position them with his tongue for the magnet at the tip of his tack hammer and one by one they left his lips and briefly arced across space to be expertly tapped into the edge of a cushioned, fabric covered seat or the wooden curve of a soft sofa.

As the oldest of five children, I became my father’s constant companion and assistant. The other kids were represented by the empty baby food jars that migrated to our basement workshop. Dad nailed the lids to the bottom of the shelves and then filled the jars with small clips and tiny nails, all visible and just a quick twist away from any job in progress.

In the upholstery workshop I was the equivalent of a trained surgical nurse, studying the surgeon’s every move, anticipating his needs, and slapping into his outstretched hand the correct instrument at the most opportune moment. Dad was a teacher, too, and would explain the purpose of each tool and stage of the process, including careful disassembling, making a pattern for the new fabric, tying the springs, applying webbing, muslin, and the ornamental finishing touches. I learned to thread the long curved needles that he used to sew secret stitches. I loved the sound of the huge shears in his hands as he cut fabric. My hands are still not big enough. One lesson he emphasized to me and the smaller kids: never put the tacks in your mouth!

On Sunday mornings in the fall, our work was more like actual surgery. He would take a few hours off to hunt wild rabbits and squirrels and I would help him skin and clean the small furry bodies. Afterwards, I would take the meat upstairs to help Mom cook dinner; rabbit in the Sunday sauce and squirrel roasted in the oven with lemon and oregano.

My father’s care with his tools and his family was earned the hard way. I was named after his mother, Giuseppina Carubia, who died in Cianciana, Provincia di Agrigento, Sicily, when he was six years old. He and his two sisters were virtual orphans with their father far away and underground, mining anthracite coal in western Pennsylvania, USA. Andrea Carubia could have abandoned the three children to extended family in his hometown, but he made them United States citizens on his naturalization papers and paid for the long journey by boat to bring them to a new home in Astoria, Queens, New York City. The immigrant child who had never seen a banana quickly learned not to eat the skin, how to speak English, and how to protect his milk money from Irish hooligans in the neighborhood. One teacher recognized a spark and guided him toward Stuyvesant High School. Service in WWII was followed by marriage, apprenticeship and the five of us kids.

After three or four of us were launched on our own, my father stopped working in the basement and created a new workshop in the boys’ empty bedroom. His creativity shifted focus from fabric, tacks, and furniture to shells and leaves. First he collected and sorted, then he began creating: refrigerator magnets, mirror frames, vases, bowls, napkin holders, and whimsical animals, all carefully glued into shape and lavishly covered with polyurethane. “Carubiasaurus” is the most famous of these; perhaps you have seen it somewhere? We accepted the clever creations as gifts for ourselves and then for our children, and finally for our grandchildren. I have at least one piece in each room of my house and I see others in my grandkids’ bedrooms. His spirit lives in each and every one.

We laughed a little at Dad’s “projects” as they multiplied and filled shelf after shelf in his house and our own. He’s gone now, just a little over two years, and I realize that his workshop has proliferated: there are now five of them! All five of us dabble in or even make a living at crafting something or other that can be traced back to that basement. We all put our tools back into the appropriate slots when we are finished using them, and none of us puts tacks in our mouth! When I go into my son’s basement and see his beer crafting worktable and tools, I am seeing the third generation of Dad’s workshop in action!