Spending as much time on the road as I do, my wife sees my absence as opportunity to organize. Now she does a beyond fantastic job of keeping our home neat and tidy. She's not a stay at home mom. She's our home manager. She's professional. She's surgical.
She's also not unlike hurricane Katrina when she gets on a mission to clean. No one stands a chance against her.
I have a certain, shall we say, "structure" to my chaos. What looks like total anarchy to Mrs. McIntyre usually strikes me as organized, because I know where everything is located. That is, in my youth I appreciated function over form, and old habits die hard. Needless to say, when I was informed that our bathroom was getting overhauled while I was on the road, I was alarmed. It would not be the first time that my beautiful chaos was disturbed by the dogged determination of my beautiful redhead.
Upon arriving home, as I unpacked my bags and went straight to the bathroom to survey the damage. My wife had installed an entire shelving system on two sides of the bathroom, with items organized by usage. Yes, it sounds insane to the cluttered but it truly was impressive. Of course my main concern was locating all the things that I needed for my day, so I started rummaging through. At that moment is when this began.
While going through the cavity underneath the sink, I noticed an old leather bag in the back corner. It was weathered and stiff from age. Honestly, I had forgotten what it contained so I reached in, retrieved it, and sat it atop the counter. I carefully moved the old zipper until it opened up and looked inside. There, inside the old bag were two items - my great grandfather's old straight razor, still in the case, and his obituary that my mother, his grand-daughter, had laminated.
J.W. Woodward was a stocky man sporting a crew cut all his days. By the time that I was old enough to remember going up to South Carolina to spend the summers with him and his wife Debbie, the crew cut had turned white. He laughed almost all the time, ate grits and butter every morning, and smothered them in bacon and eggs. He raised chickens, trophy beagles, and tropical birds. I remember getting my butt kicked on their front lawn as a child playing football at Christmas. At that time, I was much younger, and easy pickings. Their house was always full of laughter, good food, and I still remember it fondly even though I didn't see them all the time. He loved his family, always dressed well, and one thing for certain… You never sat in his chair.
His chair was an ugly one… If I'm remembering correctly, it was bright yellow, 1960s vinyl. One did not sit in his chair because next to said chair was a police scanner radio, which he monitored nonstop. In retrospect I believe that it was as much nosiness as it was concern for the community, but either way you didn't question it. J.W. Woodward was a man. A strong man.
And in my hand was the key to his day.
The razor was sharp like new, with very little rust spotting. Out of curiosity, I took it in brushed it lightly against my face and it went through the stubble like a hot knife through butter. It felt like I was holding Excalibur in my hands.... The stories that this blade could tell. This simple straight razor, from "Dixie Mfg Co., Union City, GA" had traversed the face of this well-respected man for the majority of his life. Almost like a dutiful servant standing by from day today observing every story that it could possibly experience.
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| Grandpa's razor in advertising. |
There they were in all of their glory. Tiny plastic toys in the shadow of the samurais blade, these cartridges stared at my great-grandfather's straight razor in nothing less than pure and total shame. I had always thought of shaving as something to get through while you're waking up. To J.W. Woodward, it was the experience through which the pump of his day was primed.
And that was how this idea was born.
As I sat there reading his obituary, and looking at the old razor, I went down memory lane for a while and remembered all the summers spent with him and his family. They were all great times, which would've been completely forgotten in this moment had it not been for my discovering this old blade. Then it occurred to me, what if it had been thrown away? What if this beautiful piece had just been discarded in the trash after an old man had been laid to rest?
That was the ultimate destination for every one of those crappy plastic cartridges in my drawer, but I knew that I did not want it to be the destination for my sons' memories of me.
So I took action.
(More tomorrow. Time to get to work.)
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