In the tiny Midwestern town where my wife grew up, when folks needed something fixed they went to see the men at the lumberyard. The lumberyard guys knew how to set things right.
I used to laugh at such a provincial view of problem-solving. Now I live in Baltimore, a place that, when the whole schmear including the Washington area and suburbs are counted, ranks as the fourth largest urban area in America.
However, the longer I live in this big city clime, the more I find myself behaving like I live in a small town.
For example, when the kid's sled needed fixing, I did what my wife used to do in her western Kansas home town, I took my problem to a lumberyard. I carried some of the broken wooden sled pieces and a paper with measurements for new parts, to Walbrook Mill & Lumber in West Baltimore. There I met Burt Gelvar, an ex-Marine who presides over the mill, the warehouse side of the operation where rough lumber is sawed into custom pieces. Burt not only sized up the sled problem, ordering a helper to cut chunks of red and white oak to replicate the broken sled parts, he also dispensed Baltimore wisdom by the board foot.
Burt, who is 60 years old, has worked at the lumberyard for 40 years. He grew up near the lumberyard in Easterwood Park, a seven-acre patch running south and west from the intersection of Bentalou and Baker streets.
He knows the area so well that a few years ago when an elderly woman came into the neighborhood searching for her brother's grave in a forgotten cemetery, she was sent to Burt in the lumberyard. "She wanted to visit her brother's grave before she died," Burt told me. "I knew where that cemetery was, behind the school. I used to play there." After the woman found the grave, she came to the lumberyard to thank him, Burt said.
Big and wearing a fishing cap advertising Clyde's Sport Shop, Burt periodically interrupted his conversation with me to bark orders at a truck driver unloading roofing tar, or to tell a carpenter where to park his pickup truck. "When you're on the gate, you're in charge," Burt said echoing a phrase and a philosophy he picked up back in the 1950s when he was a Marine, watching over the gate at Quantico, Va.
Sometime during the proceedings, Burt instructed a mill worker to cut the pieces of oak that would serve as replacement parts for the sled. As I waited for the wood, Burt continued his city stories.
He talked about his late mother, Sylvia Gelvar, who owned low-rent apartments in West Baltimore. His mother had three rules for running a good apartment building, he said. First, she told her tenants that their apartments should be clean enough that she could feel comfortable having a cup of coffee in their kitchens. Secondly, she told the tenants to call her the minute, the very minute, there was any problem with the plumbing. Thirdly, the rent had to be paid on time.
His mother also kept an eye on her buildings, Burt said. Once, when his mother caught a woman breaking into a building mailbox, she clobbered the woman with a purse. His mother's purse carried the tools of a woman in the rental business: several rings of keys, and maybe a hammer and some pliers, he said. So when his mother delivered the blow, it almost knocked the thief ** cold, he said. A police officer who arrived on the scene charged the mailbox molester with theft, and charged Burt's mother with assault with a purse. She beat the charge, Burt said.
The mill worker gave Burt the sled pieces for his inspection. Later I would take them home, and after a little chiseling, get the sled back together. I would also notice that I had given Burt the wrong measurements for one slat. I had been listening to his stories, when I should have minded my measurements. But it turned out not to matter much. Last week when the snow fell, the major parts were fixed and the sled was back in action.
When I carried the sled pieces to the office to pay my bill, lumberyard trucks rumbled past me. Burt told me that if I had looked closely at the front of those lumberyard trucks, I could see they carried the names of the wives and daughters of some of the lumberyard guys. The truck named for his wife, he said, has "Hurricane Harriet" painted on the hood.
The trip to the lumberyard had not only healed the sled, it had reaffirmed my belief that while Baltimore may look like a big city, it works like a small town.