Tools of My Father: by Alex and Lulu Kalman
(with illustrations by Maira Kalman)
Lulu:
I have hazy memories of grilled chicken legs and zucchini and Hungarian sausages cooking on a kettle grill upstate.
And I have hazy memories of strawberry ice cream from a hand crank machine that we all got to take turns with.
But I have a clear memory of veal shoulder. From a recipe by Marcella Hazan. A galley kitchen. A stained t -shirt. A New York view. A bread crumb crust. Oil splashed forearms. Pink framed eye glasses. My father.
And this hammered casserole. It’s called a Majestic. We have had it forever and I’ve braised in it occasionally over the years that I’ve been cooking. The pot now lives on top of the kitchen cabinets above the stove in the apartment that my mother still lives in. Where my father lived when he died.
I consider the pot his, still and always. And when I look at this pot, or I hoist it down from its perch, I think of him at this one moment in time. A moment so terrifying. So passionate. I stood pinned to the far end of our long kitchen. My father stood over this pot, his hands, deep into it, gently wrapped around a veal roast—trying to turn it to get the crust just so. I remember him lifting it—barehanded—hot, oiled—I was awed. The roast peeped over the edge of the pot, turned cooperatively in my fathers hands, and then dropped. The crust broke. My father cursed maybe. Shouted out. I was 8.
And 8 years later he was gone.
And the pot is still there and when I look at it I think of him.
Of his love.
And of the food he loved to make for us.
Alex:
I remember my dad sitting hunched over a table with a pencil in his hand. He always had a pencil on him; in his hand, in his pocket, behind his ear, or sometimes, between his teeth. He believed there are no restrictions or rules when it comes to a pencil. It is the starting point, the part of the project or the idea that could go in any direction.
He preferred pencils to computers because at that time computers could only draw straight lines (which he thought were boring). A crooked line, made by hand was much more interesting. It is also easy to make mistakes with the pencil, and what could be better? He believed that the best ideas came from mistakes.
When you use a pencil - your brain is very connected to your hand which is connected to the pencil which is making the line on the paper. So your brain is very close to the illustration of its thoughts. With a pencil you can sketch, write and doodle freely. Tibor would fill dozens and dozens of pages at a time with ideas. They were ideas that would lead him to other ideas, that would lead him to questions, to jokes-and eventually-sometimes-maybe-hopefully-to a great idea.
Lulu Kalman was born New York City. In August. To parents who enjoyed food and art. She has lived in Rome and Tel Aviv. After studying literature she attended the French Culinary Institute in NYC. Currently she is a chef for Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events.
Alex Kalman was born and lives in New York City and is the founder of Red Bucket Films and My Block NYC.
Tools of My Father’s Father: by Patrick Weldon
Christmas 1976. When I was five my grandpa made my brother, cousin and I, our first tool boxes. The hammer, sockets, screwdrivers and wrenches were basic tools, but the wooden box that housed them was the real gift. Each one had our name hand-lettered on it and the year. The boxes were huge. I could easily fit inside it, and did.
Originally from Sweden, he was a master carpenter and after moving from North Dakota, they purchased 3 acres of land in Portland that had nothing but a chicken coop on it. He built the house that my mom grew up in, that still stands today.
My most vivid memories of him are when he’d come after work, reeking like freshly cut wood and cigarettes. He’d pull his black boots off and sawdust would shake out everywhere like fake snow. He’d unbutton his worn and torn Ben Davis shirt and place it on the hook near the back door, the “Union Made” monkey smiling at me. I distinctly remember his workshop: everything had its place. He had drawn silhouettes of every tool on the pegboard, so easily identifiable that, even as a child, I could have put each tool back in it’s place.
Looking at it today I see the detail he put into the box: piano hinge hardware, stained wood, finished edges. I sometimes like to open it up and just smell it. It reminds me of the of his old sweat stained and sawdusted hickory shirt.
He taught me the importance of using the right tool for the right job. Respect your tools. They’ll last you a lifetime, and then some.
Native Oregonian, Patrick Weldon works for a large law firm in Portland as the Facilities/Operations supervisor. When he’s not wearing his corporate tool belt, he enjoys riding his bikes with family, exploring Portland’s many craft breweries, riding motorcycles and chopping wood with his trusted companion, Famous Green.
Tools of My Father: by Kim Rilleau
My father was a fiercely creative, free-thinking individual from the North coast of France. He moved with his mother and siblings to New York after World War I. Though his artistic talents were considerable he also posessed an extremely sharp scientific bent and worked in the early days of radio developing vacuum tubes at Fairchild Aviation experimenting with sophisticated plywoods for use on aircraft. He moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the 30s where he began exploring leather as a new medium, creating dazzling pieces of functional leather art with my Mother. I was born in 1950 and learned what has become the family trade: hand-made leather work.
This is a picture of my father’s nailing bench. As a tool it has served the shop well since before I was born. Although many, many of the tools that I use on a daily basis were my father’s, I chose this one because it is a station of creative concentration and an expression of his borderless imagination. This bench had once been a piano, a baby grand I think. It had fallen into a dysfunctional state by the previous owner and deemed un-reclaimable as an instrument. With his typically out-of-box vision my father saw — not a broken piano — but an extremely stable, impressively solid, perfectly sized, and superbly crafted workbench where he could set his anvil and comfortably nail his beautiful leather sandals. Reverently he set to work dismantleing the instrument and like an indiginous hunter he used all the components of this stately beast. He removed the beautifully wound and incredibly strong piano strings, coiled and stored them in the rafters for future use. All the ivory and ebony from the keys were set aside for projects as yet unknown, and the massive bronze (was it really bronze?) soundboard hung for years as detritus / art on the wall of the shop. After all this careful dissection there stood the nailing bench.
It is too short a space here to fully express why this bench, and the many other components of the shop, reveal the often tumultuous relationship with my father. Maybe it was the many long hours that I saw as a young child: him at work with his careful focus, hammer in hand at this powerful and graceful station. How can I forget those early days sitting on the stool, hammer in my wobbly hand, trying to emulate his steady strike? Our relationship consisted of deep, deep unconditional love and support on his part, and often typical teeneage surliness and aloofness on mine. There was a lot of storminess on the surface but thankfully that was counterbalanced by a deep ballast of unspoken love on both our parts. There have been many occasions when I dropped my head in regret for the lost opportunities to have shown him thanks for the painful sacrifices he made on my behalf. It wasn’t until I began rearing my own four children that I came to understand what all that must have entailed for him. He died in 1977 when I was 27 years old. I miss him still.
Kim Rilleau was born in Truro, Massachusetts in 1950 and moved to the neighboring ville of Provincetown when he was six months old. His parents were talented artists who found themselves in the New York/Provincetown art scene and began working in leather, finally settling on the Cape where they opened the Rilleau leather shop. As the first-born son he was raised in the leather trade and continues the tradition to this day, sometimes with the help of his son Ty. He and his wife Lynne have four children: two daughters Ember and Elena and two sons Guy and Ty. In 1997 he moved the family from Provincetown to Woodstock, Vermont where he proudly continues the Rilleau Leather tradition. Kim is also trained as a movement coach and myo-fascial therapist which came in handy with his design of the Best Made axe sling.
Tools of My Father: by Sheena Lara
My dad was a small town guy who worked at the local post office, but his passion was inventing. As a side job back in the 1970’s, he would mow the town cemetery and this is where the idea for The Wheelie Trimmer was born. Frustrated with having to carry a weed whacker around every tombstone, the idea of putting it on wheels came to him. He designed and built every Wheelie Trimmer by hand in his workshop up the hill from our house. There, he had every tool needed to manufacture them: drill presses, welding equipment, etc. To sell the trimmers, he took it cross county to various conventions and peddled them to churches with adjoining cemeteries. It was at one such church in San Diego, California, that he met my mother. They kept in touch via phone and mail and dad visited her several times. Eventually they married and had two girls, I am the younger.
Over time, Green Manufacturing, Inc (the name of his business) couldn’t keep up with production and my dad moved on. It’s been four years since my dad passed and we’ve left the workshop exactly as it was. A recent peek through a window revealed a United States map with pins in every town with a Wheelie Trimmer and an article titled, “Are You Destined to Make Millions?” on the office wall.
Even though the Wheelie Trimmer was his main invention, he had at least four other products he manufactured: the “Mr. Wood Lifter,” the “EZ Slide Probe,” the “Miller’s Memorial Lifter” and “Rotory-Bar-Mowers.” One of my favorite memories is of him constantly sketching ideas for inventions at the kitchen table. He would call me over and show me schematics scrawled out on napkins and scratch pieces of paper. He would ask if I thought it would work and expecting some sort of response, I gave him the most thoughtful suggestions a child could. Those conversations usually ended with a shake of the head and, “I don’t know Sheena Bean, I think it could make some money.”
Well, dad never made millions, but following his dream led him to my mom and of course my sister and myself. My first invention will be dedicated to him.
Sheena Lara works for her alma mater, Iowa State University, as a graphic designer. The creative apple did not fall far from the tree. As a child she built a tree house and go-kart with her friends using tools and supplies from her dad’s shop. As an adult she has built prototypes of her own inventions. She has an affinity for the outdoors and social media. Sheena is a regular contributor to the world of Best Made.
Tools of My Father: by Nick Zdon
Here are some photos of my father’s father’s hat, a Champ Fedora. I hesitate to call it my grandfather’s even though it was his originally. He died before I was born and I have no memory of him. However, I do remember my father wearing it on fishing and camping trips. He used to dip it in the lake or the river to keep his head cool. The hat band still bears the address of the house my father grew up in in Columbia Heights, presumably so that if it were lost it could be returned. The last time I talked to my father about the hat he was quick to point out that the ventilation holes cut in the crown were done by his father, not by him. Apparently my grandfather had few qualms about ‘modifying’ certain items. It was common for him to wrap things in tape to make them last longer. On the same trip I collected the hat I also left with my grandfather’s cribbage board and his old bamboo fly rod. Both the box for the cribbage board and the protective tube for the fly rod had been completely and painstakingly wrapped in tape. They’re both still functional 50 years later, so maybe there’s something to it.
Nick Zdon was born and raised in Minnesota. As a youth he spent a good deal of time camping and tramping around the great outdoors as a Boy Scout. Since graduating from The College of Visual Arts in 2004 he can be found working as a graphic designer in Minneapolis during the day, and wandering the streets of St Paul by night. He makes regular trips to Minnesota’s deep north for fishing, canoeing, and all night cribbage benders. He is a regular contributor to all that is Best Made.
Photo by Nick Zdon
Above: Hand-tied flies by Martin Goldberg
Tools of My Father: by Carin Goldberg
Brooklyn born. Garmento. Jewish. World-class fly fisherman.
My father Martin was all of the above, and more. He is remembered mostly as a difficult, verbose man prone to violent outbursts both verbal and physical. If pharmacological remedies were the norm (as they are today) in the 50’s and 60’s he might have been a very different man and father.
While deeply tormented by his circumstances and his disappointments, oddly, he was very funny, audacious, well-read, worldly, and most of all, an avid outdoorsman.
He studied forestry at Penn State and dreamed of becoming a forest ranger. For most Jews, especially at that time, this was a very un-Jewish choice of profession and considered verboten by his mother and father, Jewish immigrants who would often threaten suicide or heart failure if my father were to pursue his true calling. His family insisted he join the family dress business, Robert Goldberg and Sons, located right smack in the middle of the New York City garment district.
A successful business that, financially, served our young family well. A nice house, 2 cars, piano lessons, summer camp, trips to Europe. But my father was miserable and hated going to “the place” each day. And his deep unhappiness manifested in depression and rage. (This “prosperity” ended in 1963 when the business went bankrupt and we went from comfortable to poor practically overnight). But, there one one thing that transformed my father into the man he might have been. Fly fishing.
Whenever possible he would leave in the middle of the night on a Saturday morning and drive his Opal Cadet (the dirty, “fishing/hunting/dogs” car) to upstate New York to his sanctuary on a pond on the Beaverkill River. It was on that pond that my father found his sanity. He would cast his line for hours until it was too dark to see, choosing his hand-made flies to match the entomology of the day and the stream.
My father didn’t like to eat fish. He often threw them back except for the few he would bring back at the request of neighbors and friends. Although he taught me how to clean his catch of the day he never truly succeeded in teaching me how to fly fish. I think I never truly wanted to know how because I somehow knew I would be trespassing on his one true way of finding peace and well-being.
Carin Goldberg was born in New York City and studied at the Cooper Union School of Art. She began her career as a staff designer at CBS Television, CBS Records and Atlantic Records before establishing her own firm, Carin Goldberg Design, in 1982. Over the following two decades Carin designed hundreds of book jackets for all the major American publishing houses. In recent years her image making has expanded to publication design, brand consulting and editorial illustration.
Tools of My Father: is an ongoing series that explores and celebrates the relationships between children, tools, and fathers. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we present other stories.
Photo by Dorothy Hong
