Cleats

Four hands would make this easier, but I only have the standard two.  A chunk of walnut awaits a compound miter cut.  Just sitting there on the workbench, sort of mocking me as I try to figure this out.  Building a table for the City Hall breakroom, I’m at the Public Works shop alone, after hours.  The walnut sits there while the calculus of great, cheap and fast, pick any two churns through the noggin.  Decades of woodworking experience, and every bit of my fingers still with me.  Ok … let’s give this a try.

Screw four boards into the workbench, temporarily, to hold the piece in place as the chop saw cuts through it.  It’s like having two people, perfectly still and immune to danger, helping.  If this works, each of the two cuts on the two cleats which stabilize the tabletop and hold the legs will end up exactly the same.  Yep.  That might work.  The cut is still slightly tricky and sorta dangerous, so I plot my escape in advance if it all goes instantly wrong.  If you came here for woodworking advice, here it is: that big nasty spinning blade don't discriminate in cutting wood, flesh or bone.  So think through it in advance.

Working alone is kind of stupid but, there you have it.  I’m a full service City Manager, with plenty to do during the day, and more free time than is healthy during the evenings and weekends.  I suppose I could watch Fox News and whip up some local executive orders, but I don’t own an operational television in this time zone, and I’m more concerned with the number than size of my fingers, so the woodshop will suffice as productive distraction from loneliness.   

There’s this gem of a mid-century City Hall, undergoing something of a renaissance, with an employee break room in progress.  We are going to go with a period correct vibe; vintage travel posters, a refurbished console stereo and other mid-century appropriate furnishings including a lava lamp to soothe away the stress of the working end of Seaside governance.  The complexities of building codes, zoning ordinances and fee schedules will be set aside, at least for a few minutes, in a restive cocoon of wood-paneled calm.  If you came here for organizational leadership advice, here’s some: treat employees well.  They do better, happier work that way. 

They also do better, happier work if they’re not hungry, so a small dining table is needed.  There was this standard laminate covered particle board piece of Office Maxdepot junk that says who the heck cares about anything that would and could serve as a horizontal resting place for your lunch.  But here’s the thing.  You either care about something, someone or someplace or you don’t.  Seaside’s new mission statement is three words.  Include.  Innovate.  Inspire.   Awfully hard to be inspired by laminate-covered particle board.   

Real wood is the answer, in all its tactile, carbon-storing beauty.  Real wood mid-century tables from the real 1960s are also frightfully expensive, so the kismet of City Manager with time on his hands, requisite woodworking skill and ok maybe a touch more place-making obsession than is healthy solves the cheap fast great riddle.   Is the table a metaphor for caring enough about place to risk yourself for it? 

Hold the chunk of walnut in my left hand and grab the handle/switch of the big nasty spinning blade in my right hand and let’s find out.  Is the City Hall renaissance, and this small tricky part of it, a metaphor for Seaside’s ascendance?   I suppose you could check the record in Vernon Hills, Davenport, Prairie Crossing...  Each of those places has bits of personal handcrafting.  Will someone, sitting at the table in the decades to follow, rub the wood and think about doing something just a little more thoughtfully or beautifully or in a manner that invests themselves in the calculus of risk and reward? 

It’s all an experiment, and time will tell.  Let’s give it a try.