“Mercy, mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be.”

The words to Marvin Gaye’s song were true then and they are true now.

My neighbor Crandall was recalling some of the exploits of his extended youth.

We join Crandall as he pontificates on his experiences in shop class back there in New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva-Bath-Otisco-Matawan-Summit-Cooleyville-Berlin-Hope-Trenton-Lemond-Hollandale-Clarks Grove-Freeborn-Trenton-Vista-Manchester-Beaver Lake-St. Olaf Junior High School.

“Ah, I’ll never forget the hallowed halls where I took shop and was taught about electricity, metalworking and woodworking. I tried building a coffee table in shop class one year. I was hoping to be able to accomplish it with a minimum of fuss and little loss of blood because I can wield a hammer with the best of them. It’s a good thing for the world that I vowed never to use my superpowers for evil.”

I guess the best of them are all the other providers of bent nails. I remember that class. I was in it. It was filled with students who were destined to live their lives without all of their fingers.

“Mr. Lillesve, the industrial arts teacher slash driver’s training instructor gave me plans to build the world’s most perfect coffee table. It would be the kind of furniture that my parents would be so proud of that they would flag drivers down as they attempted pass by our driveway. Once they had stopped the innocent bystanders, they would force them into the house to look at my creation. The travelers would be beyond amazed. Lives would be changed.”

It was at this point that my eyes began to mist.

“I started the project with great enthusiasm. It was my life’s work, but it didn’t go well. I cut off too much wood,” Crandall went on. “I never know when to stop. I have some kind of disorder that doesn’t allow me to stop sawing like a normal person would. I couldn’t stop. I needed a board-stretcher.”

I recall the day when Crandall sliced the board into sawdust with a hyperactive saw. One witness described the scene as, “Run for your lives!” There has to be a 12-step program for people who saw too much.

“I love the smell of sawdust in the morning. I love the sound of saws. I ended up without much lumber. It wouldn’t have made a coffee table. It wouldn’t even have made a bread board. I’m known for doing things without giving them proper thought. I like to think that I’m spontaneous. Well, sir, I ran the saw through the hunk of remaining wood a few more times until it came to me.”

“The saw police?” I said.

“The fog cleared from the mystery. It was a picture frame. That’s what I was destined to make. I couldn’t construct anything else because I was meant to craft an astounding picture frame. I was motivated. I set about working hard to finish my project. I began to squint like Clint Eastwood in one of his spaghetti westerns. When I squint, I’m a sight to behold.”

The only time Crandall was a motivated student in school was when he was inspired by the possibility of a snow day.

“How did it turn out?” I asked.

“Well, when I squinted hard enough, it looked like a picture frame—sort of. I don’t understand it. I sanded like a madman. I glued it. I am gifted at gluing things, but for some reason my talent abandoned me. I glued the little finger of my left hand to the frame. It was embarrassing having to go to the nurse’s office to have a picture frame removed. At least it didn’t involve a nail gun this time. Mr. Kraupa, our principal, thought it was the world’s largest toothpick. The picture frame came out lopsided. It gave me the same feeling that Wile E. Coyote gets after he runs off the cliff and discovers that he is subject to the law of gravity.”

“What did you do with it?” I inquired.

“I gave it to my mother for Mother’s Day.”

“Good move,” I said. “Moms are great ones to give that less-than-perfect gift. Mothers will tear up in gratitude over a painted rock or a bouquet of wilted dandelions.”

“My mother took it with a grunt and a smile—it could have been gas. She put the frame around a photograph of me with a huge pimple on the end of my nose and hung it in the porch so that everyone who entered the house would be looking directly at it. My humiliations are always public.”

“So much for the woodwork,” I declared.

My neighbor sighed and said, “My project was wood, but it didn’t work.”

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.