It’s a warm day in late May. The deep South is notorious for letting go of spring weather like a hot potato. Overnight the weather conditions go from cool and clear to hot and steamy. The afternoon thundershowers are rolling through in waves.

Walter is standing at the entrance to the tack room of the old barn, leaning with one shoulder against the door post, his hands deep in the pockets of his bibbed overalls. Although it’s only four in the afternoon the sky is turning dark. Looking past his garden out across the pasture, it looks more like twilight than the middle of the afternoon. There’s a stiff breeze coming out of the northeast.

“Gonna be another nasty one,” he says under his breath.

The old barn belonged to his dad back in the day when farming was more than just a memory. His Pawpaw built the original structure. Just two milking stalls, the corn crib, and this old tack room for the harnesses and gear. His dad added on two more shed roofs, one for hay and the other for the tractor.

Walter put a new tin roof on it a number of years back before his dad passed away. His dad had always told him that a good roof is the life of any building.

“You take care of the roof,” he’d say, “and the roof will take care of the rest.”

He wasn’t sure if he’d ever live back at the homeplace, but he did it anyway. He did it for his dad’s peace of mind. His cousins, Todd and Robert, helped him.

“Ah, that’s a fine looking roof,” his dad said. “She’ll stand there for a lot more years now.”

Walter moved into the house he grew up in after he got serious about retiring. He and Flo, his wife, didn’t need their four bedroom house anymore. They needed to downsize anyway. Besides, if they didn’t live here, the place was gonna fall apart and crumble to the ground.

He worked weekends and nights fixing up the place. Not much had been changed since 1975. New lights. New floors. New plumbing. New paint. It was a lot of work, but he wasn’t doing anything extravagant. He was a simple man, and a simple house suited him just fine.

Walter turned from the door to step back inside his little shop. It was a room that pleased him. He had knocked out the wall between the tack room and the milking shed. He closed in the open end of the barn and added a floor where the cows once stood at the feed trough. This gave him enough space for a workbench, a few tools, and a rocking chair in which he had been known to fall asleep to the sway of his own rocking.

Even though he didn’t own any cows and had no use for worn out harnesses, Walter felt a kinship to the way of life that had left its mark on this old barn . It was a way of life that left more than a few footprints on his soul that he could never quite claim, because he grew up in a time when that spirit was withering away. Still he felt connected.

This is why after he finally retired, he knew that he had made the right call moving back home.

There’s a shaving horse that belonged to his Pawpaw sitting by the window. Walter added the window to let in more light. Dark barns and old eyes don’t go together very well. He takes a seat, his feet straddled either side of the horse. He places a rough piece of maple beneath the wedge in front of his knees and presses the lever forward with his foot.

Each time he pulls the drawknife across the wood, he hears a rumble of thunder in the distance. The rain is falling against the tin roof. There’s a rhythm and a song in his head that seems to match the work in his hands.

Walter never really imagined himself here. Doing this. Making wooden spoons and spatulas for the fun of it. Wearing his overalls and spending a good portion of his days inside his little shop.

He was a blue collar guy. He was used to the work. He made his way up the ladder at the paper mill and ended his career there as a superintendent. The job had provided a good life. He wasn’t rich, but he never set out to be rich, so that didn’t surprise him.

When word got out that he was going to retire, everyone wanted to know what he was gonna do with himself. How was he going to spend his time. What was he gonna do to keep from driving Flo crazy?

“What’s your plan Walter?” they’d ask.

Well, it’s been almost five years since he walked out of the plant for the last time. And here he sits on a shave horse that is probably close to a hundred years old, and he’s making a wooden spoon. He’s thinking about the wagon wheel spokes his grandfather used to make on this very same seat. He’s thinking about the hammer handle he saw his dad make from a hickory stick.

With every pull of the knife long curls of maple fall to the floor. An unruly block of wood takes on more of a contoured look. Walter is not a master craftsman. He’s just a guy with time on his hands.

His Pawpaw was really the last true farmer in his family. His dad kept the cows going, but he worked as a mechanic down at the Ford tractor dealership in town to make his living. “Smart man,” Walter always thought. He knew every nut and bolt of every tractor Ford ever made. Neighbors called him all the time. There wasn’t a better tractor man in this part of the state.

Walter turns the wood around so he can rough out the business end of the spoon. He switches to a smaller drawknife and the pulls are shorter.

It occurs to Walter that he, now in his early 70s, is older than his dad was when he retired. He tries to remember what it was like for his dad, but he has no idea. He remembers the events of his retirement. The little ceremony down at the shop. There’s a picture hanging on the wall in the living room over the mantle.

But what was he thinking? How was he dealing with the changes? Walter was busy with his own job back then. He just never thought about asking his dad, “So, how’s it going?”

He sets the drawknife in his lap for a moment. The rain has let up. The sky brightens. The humidity is thick and he can feel the sweat rolling down his forehead.

“I should have talked to him.”

Walter exhales the thought more than speaking the words out loud. He wishes he could ask now, but that ship has sailed. Besides, he’s content with the choices he’s made for himself.

Each man finds his own way.

And for the time being, making spoons is enough.