Dudley Boyd and His Time Machine
by Bruce Gardner
Working with interesting people is one of life’s greatest and most entertaining pleasures. In a work environment, one sees a side of people not readily exposed in merely social circumstances. That seems especially true if the work is physically demanding and, at the same time, calls for a high degree of hard-earned skill. I found myself among an entertaining group of men in the early days of the revival of timber framing, a beautiful and archaic way of building homes and churches, in the mid 1980’s. Standing head and shoulders above all the rest in entertainment value was a man named Dudley Boyd.
Dudley considered himself to be the last purebred Scotsman in Tennessee. He promoted this image by wearing a baggy tam perched crookedly on his head. To the tam he added a tiny pair of wire-rimmed glasses astride his nose, a worn pipe clenched in his teeth, and a practiced Scottish lilt to his Tennessee drawl. To complete his self-image as one who knows of kilts and bagpipes, Dudley hung a Scottish flag from the barn rafters above his workstation. Dudley was a skillful woodworker who accomplished his work methodically. Never one to be rushed, he could take ten minutes to properly load, tamp, and light his pipe. Upon lighting that pipe, the Scotsman would step back from the timber he was working on, survey it with a practiced eye, and make some profound statement about the wood. “By golly, I think this curly grain is going to be the death of me,” he would say to no one in particular. With his Scottish flag swaying gently above, he would return to his work, puffing and muttering to himself. Someone nearby would chuckle quietly and no other reply would be offered. Woodworkers tend to dwell in their own world, alone with the work at hand.
The equipment shed in which we worked was a drafty affair. Measuring seventy feet long by fourteen feet wide, the shop was enclosed on each end and bounded by the wall shared with the barn. The fourth wall was low and open to the fields beyond. Sheltered by a tin roof above, our workplace was drafty in winter, sweltering in summer, and remains as the best place I ever worked. In those days of timber framing we had no teachers save ourselves and such books as we could find that pictured construction techniques of early European, Japanese, and Seventeenth Century American buildings. Consequently, we destroyed a fair amount of perfectly good timber as we tried our hand at cutting mortise and tenon joints, in ever more complicated patterns. The floor beneath our feet was a thick layer of oak chips. Under those chips was nothing more than earth with a little hay mixed in. The shop was always dusty and most likely hazardous to our health. It smelled strongly of oak, and sweat, and faintly of manure. I loved it.
We were hired, early in our career as timber framers, to build a structure that would serve as a combination shop and garage, with a loft above. The client had once been to Europe and considered himself to be quite knowledgeable about our chosen line of work. In truth, this particular client had more money than sense, both of which he displayed by insisting on an unrealistic completion date at any price we cared to name. We possessed good sense and money in equal measure--little of either--and so accepted the job. Adding two visiting and aspiring timber framers to our crew of three, we set to work.
The job was calculated to require some 400 man-hours to accomplish. Raw timbers arrived on a Monday morning. The completed project was promised by Saturday. This was going to be a long week. We began work early each morning and worked until long past dark. As the long days slipped by, Dudley became ever quieter. He worked steadily at his methodical pace without complaint, but his shoulders took on a pronounced slump and fatigue showed on his bespectacled face. Breaks became lengthier and more frequent as our crew, and most especially Dudley, entered the zone called “diminishing returns” by pencil pushers.
Late in the week the local newspaper sent a young reporter by to take note of this novel way of making a building. The novice scribe walked among us, his dark suit and shiny shoes quickly covered in fine, white dust, and singled out Dudley for an interview. “What’s it like—this timber framing?” he shouted over the din of a wood planer that spewed chips on the notepad clutched in his hand. Dudley laid his chisel along the nearest timber. He turned to face the reporter and removed his pipe from his teeth. Mopping his brow with his floppy tam and displaying a baleful look on his face, he made his reply. “Well sir,” he said, “You get up early in the morning and you work ‘til you drop. Then you go to bed for a few hours. Next day, you get up early in the morning and you work ‘til you drop. That’s what it’s like.” No further questions were posed and the resulting article was not particularly complimentary of our enterprise.
Friday morning dawned and mild panic was upon us. We were tired yet much work remained before the timbers could be loaded on a truck. By quitting time the end seemed in sight and we agreed to work a bit later. Dudley, always a clock-watcher, now developed a positive fascination with the timepiece that hung high on the shop wall. Each time he re-loaded his pipe, he would stare at the clock with an entranced look that seemed to say, “Hurry on. Hurry on. Not much longer now.” After loading his pipe he would step into the tool room to touch-up his chisel’s edge. Once in the tool room, he was out of view. My brother, knowing that Dudley would once again study the clock in a half-hour or so, fell into the habit of pushing the clock hands backward about twenty minutes each time Dudley disappeared from view. All but Dudley knew of the ruse, which somehow made the time pass more lightly.
As we worked the last of the timbers, 3:00 A.M. had come and gone, but the clock admitted only 9:00 P.M. Dudley, moving at a snail’s pace for the past three or four hours, stopped to tamp his pipe for the last time that day. He absently poked a finger in the pipe bowl to be sure no embers remained and clacked the pipe on his sawhorse to empty it. The Scottish flag above Dudley’s head hung limply in the still, early-morning air. Quiet reigned, save for the katydids in the field beyond the shop. Dudley concentrated on the clock face as he tamped his pipe. “By golly. The time sure has passed slowly today,” he said. We laughed along with Dudley and agreed that, yes indeed--the time had slowly passed. The last of the worked timbers were rolled from the shop and into the darkness of the timber yard. All departed with muttered good-byes. I turned out the lights on that long, long day and headed to bed.
This was Dudley’s last timber framing project. The hours were too long and the work too heavy for his small frame. He fled back to his tiny furniture shop and resides there still, tamping his pipe slowly and keeping reasonable hours. He only learned just how many hours he had worked that long day when he collected his pay.
We delivered our completed project on time to our worldly client. Over the course of the next decade we completed scores of projects, most much larger than this early work. The old, drafty shop was pulled down and replaced with a well-lit building that afforded shelter. Clients came and went. Through it all, the same clock that Dudley had studied so carefully continued to mark our time. We came to realize that we had lives beyond our workweek and so kept regular hours. And through the years the tale of Dudley and his time machine was told, embellished, and re-told; coming to define the early days when a few of us worked hard together to learn an old craft.
I'll be seeing you out there.
February 1, 2002
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