It had been sitting in his shop unopened for over 27 years; a plywood crate nailed shut, the contents of which have never seen the light of day.

I’ve been in Wayne’s shop a lot over the years. I can’t really say if I ever noticed the crate before. He brought so many “treasures” home. Year by year the free space inside his shop shrank.

Inside the door to the left he kept a stack of sheetrock, maybe 20 sheets. Next to that, a stack of 4×8 beaded siding. Around the next corner he built a lumber rack the size of an F150 and filled it with rough cut cedar and a small collection of walnut. Between the rack and the wall there was barely enough room to squeeze through the door to his stained-glass studio.

If you stood in one place and took in a 360-degree view, you’d see boxes and boxes of nails, screws, brick ties, hurricane straps, old hammers, hand saws, gloves, rags, safety goggles, ceramic tile, rolls of wire, electrical boxes, wire nuts, light fixtures, tape measures, speed squares, levels, and leather tool belts. Standing over and around all of that he kept his table saw and jointer on wheels, though there was no room to roll them anywhere without first moving boxes out of the way.

I’m not making fun. I’m just making observations.

Any empty space left was taken up with old cabinets which he intended to repurpose. The floor under the back windows was covered in leftover 2×10 lumber which he kept for some future project rather than return to the store. And next to that were a couple of 16ft laminated beams that couldn’t be lifted. So, there they sat.

Add to the mix the ladders that stood up against the wall; the shovels, rakes, posthole diggers, and hoes that hung on the wall; the shelves that held toolboxes and power tools; the general clutter; and what you have is a shop with barely a foot path to make your way from one side to the other.

My point is this. An unmarked crate could get overlooked. A fella could walk right by it for years and never notice it.

It was about a year after Wayne passed that Debbie called and asked me to help clean up the shop. A man leaves stuff behind and sometimes it’s hard to know what to do with it all. A lot of it, she didn’t know what it was or what it was for. She figured that I would have some idea. She didn’t want to throw out something she should hold on to.

It was during one of our “cleaning” sessions that I first saw the crate.

“What is that?”

I was looking at a plywood box that stood about 30” high.

“There’s no telling,” she said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed it. It’s gotta be something Wayne needed, I’m sure.”

We cleared off the cardboard boxes that were stacked on top. It was surrounded by buckets filled with wrenches and screw drivers and assorted tools. We shoved those out of our way. I tried to scooch it away from the wall and couldn’t budge it.

“Whatever it is, it’s heavy.”

At this point, all other shop activity came to a halt. We both had to know what was in the crate.

“The lid is nailed down,” Debbie said. “How are we gonna get in it?”

We dug around on the shelves around the corner and found a hammer and a small pry bar. A couple of hard taps and the pry bar went under the edge of the plywood. The nails creaked. The lid moaned. I felt like Indiana Jones, uncovering the secrets of the lost tomb.

We peeled back the top layer of packing. Small and medium boxes filled the upper section. I could see an electrical cord, so I knew we were probably looking at a machine of some sort for the shop. And when we pulled back the heavy plastic cover, beneath sat a brand new 15” thickness planer from Grizzly Industrial, one of the national producers of woodshop tools.

The original shipping ticket was inside, dated 1998.

It’s impossible to get inside the mind of Wayne. Believe me, I’ve tried. Why he bought this machine and never uncrated it and put it to use, I’ll never know. So many unanswered questions.

One could surmise that he was gonna make room for it one day. Find a place to set it up. And one could also surmise that he had plans to mill all the cedar and walnut stacked in his lumber rack across the room. But that day never came.

I made Debbie an offer to buy the planer. I knew that she was unsure about what she was gonna do with the shop. But I also knew that she was determined to finish what Wayne started and make it a shop that her daughters and sons-in-law could use if they wanted.

“Let me think on it,” she said.

That was probably more than a year ago.

I have a planer in my shop, but it’s a cheap overseas-made brand. It takes boards up to 12 inches wide and it does okay for most of what I need it to do. I have told myself that one day I’ll upgrade.

Which is why when Debbie called me last week, I almost fainted on the floor.

“We’ve talked,” she said. This means that she and David talked. He is her one son-in-law who is most likely to use Wayne’s shop someday. He is the reason that she was hesitant to sell me the planer all those months ago.

“Yeah, we’ve talked and it’s going to be such a long, long time before David gets to do any serious work in the shop that we want you to have the planer.”

I can’t recall much of what I said after that. I’m pretty sure I got light-headed and muttered some words of gratitude.

Well, the day came this week when I went over to get the crate and bring the planer over to my shop. I knew it was heavy, but it wasn’t until I tried to move it that I read in the manual that it weighs 460 lbs. I won’t bore you with all the details of the set up because I’m certain you don’t share my excitement.

I just want to say this much. Whenever there is someone who becomes a significant part of your life, there are certain things that reinforce that connection. For me and Wayne, it was the shop and the tools. We shared so many hours and so many dreams of building things. We had a bond that was born out of the work we shared.

And now, I have his planer. 1998 new stock. Never before used, until now. And I will use it to mill the walnut from his shop in order to make a table for his daughter. Crazy, right?

Marion helped me finish setting it up today. It runs so slick. I can almost hear Wayne saying, “Ain’t that nice. Real nice.”

Still connected.