I sat transfixed as the old man’s skillful hands formed a single block of pine into a pair of slip jointed pliers. With a last precision cut the two jaw/handles were freed to work independently in the wonderful way this invention was designed.

Awe struck as a boy of eight can be, I asked in new found reverence, "How jah do that, mister?"

His kind eyes fell on me, somehow the sounds of the street fair faded as he whispered near inaudibly, "Practice, my son, practice."

Not satisfied with his cryptic advice I responded, "But who taught you to do that? Can you teach me?"

To this he answered, "first you must know, it is not this wooden toy that is of value, poor thing wouldn’t turn a loose nut without damaging itself. It is the skill you must develop with the knife and the knowledge of both it and wood that are things of value. You wouldn’t want these skillful hands taking out your appendix, now would ya, boy."

The thought of his knife opening my belly gave me a chill. ‘No sir’, I muttered. But how can I learn how to do that trick of makin’ pliers outta wood?

By this time he must have seen I was just too young to grasp the wisdom being offered so he reached out and placed the newly made marvel into my eager grasp saying, ‘Study these and see the way the cuts are made always with the grain of the wood in mind. When your father lets you use a proper knife learn to use it well and remember, to read what I have carved here on their handle:

"Mastery is the result of care and is never the child of chaos."

That day at the Bluffton fair I was much more impressed with the man who pulled coins out of my ears than with the carver....but I was only eight.