Wood Made Alive
The old storyteller was sitting on the side porch of the
store again, enjoying the breeze like he did every afternoon while he was
waiting for his friends, waiting for the watermen to come in from their work
out on the waters of the Bay.
“The other day,” I said, “you told me about the turtle
hunter who became president of a big university, and you said another man on
this creek about that same time became famous.”
“I did,” the old storyteller said, “The other man was a
barber.”
“A famous barber?” I said. “I never heard of a famous barber.”
“He was a barber, and he cut my hair when I was a little
boy growing up here on the creek, but that’s not why he became famous. He also made ducks.”
“He became famous making ducks?”
“Yep, that’s what made him famous, and his brother,
too. They both made ducks.”
He pulled a small block of wood from his pocket, and a
knife from another pocket, and he opened the knife and began whittling at the
wood.
“They were carvers,” he said, “both of ‘em were wood
carvers, and they made duck decoys for the hunters that lived here by the
creek.
“Lem
did all of his work at home. He had a
shop for makin’ ducks. Steve carried
blocks of wood in his pocket. Many a
time I’ve seen him sit here at the store and carve a duck head while he was
talkin’. Didn’t take him hardly and time
at all.
“That’s
what I’m carvin,’ a duck head, but I’ll need a lot more time than Steve. I’ll need at least a week, if I finish it at
all.
“The
hunters around here, they were ‘pot hunters.’
That’s what we called the men here on the creek who hunted for ducks
durin’ the winter, when the crabs have all buried in the mud and the weather’s
too bad for goin’ out on their little boats to catch oysters.
“Pot hunters are a lot different from sport hunters, the
people who come from the big city and hunt just for the fun of it. Pot hunters did it to put food on the
table. Well, these barbers made ducks in
their spare time, and a barber by this creek has lots of spare time. All his customers spend six days a week out
on their boats, so Lem and Steve did most of their barberin’ late in the day,
about sunset, after the men have come in from work. Since they couldn’t cut hair durin’ most of
the day, they had to find another way to bring in a little money, so they made
ducks, decoys for the pot hunters to use when the weather was too bad for ‘em
to work on the water. A pot hunter will
go out in the marsh when the weather’s bad to kill a few ducks so the family
will have somethin’ to eat.”
“So they became famous for carving decoys their neighbors
used when they went hunting,” I said.
“That doesn’t seem to be something that would make a person famous.”
“Their ducks were special, and lots of people began to
notice, so customers came long distances to buy them, but not to use as
decoys. Many bought ‘em as decorations
for the house. Lem and Steve made some
especially good for that, called ‘em ‘mantle piece birds.’ Charged extra for ‘em.”
“I’ve
heard some of those ducks looked almost as good as stuffed ducks.”
“Better,”
the old storyteller said. “A stuffed
duck is a dead duck. A Ward duck was
wood made alive.”
The
old storyteller held up the block of wood and turned it around. It was becoming rounded, but it was a long
way from looking like a duck head.
“When Lem was born, he had a crippled hand. His father knew that the boy would never be
able to work on the water with a hand like that, takes two good hands to work
on a boat. Sometimes takes one hand to
hang on in bad weather while you’re workin’ with the other, so a man can’t get
by on the water with only one good hand.
Lem’s father knew he had to train the boy to do somethin’ besides work
on a boat. He decided that barberin’ was
the way to go, so he built a little barber shop beside the house, and he
learned barberin’ so he could teach this boy.
Now this father was already makin’ decoys, and they were pretty good, so
he kept makin’ ‘em for somethin’ to do when nobody was at the barber shop for
him to cut their hair, so he taught Lem to make decoys as well.
“Well, Lem really got interested in this decoy makin’, so
interested that he was determined to make better decoys than anybody else on
the creek. You see, the other decoy
makers could crab or fish or catch oysters, but Lem couldn’t do that, so he had
to sell his decoys to bring in money, and the way to do that was to make better
decoys than anybody else was makin’ and he was determined that he would do
that.
“When Lem was growin’up he hunted a lot, he brought home
a lot of ducks to put in the pot, and when he was out huntin’ he didn’t just go
to kill ducks, he spent a lot of time studyin’ those ducks. He studied how they looked sittin’ in the
water, and studied ‘em right after he killed ‘em as well, said they changed
color quick after they died and he wanted their livin’ color, not their dead
color. Sometimes a flock of ducks would
pitch in his decoys, and he would sit there in the blind, just watchin’ ‘em to
see how they acted. Other men on the
creek claimed he was crazy, he’d sit there with ducks in front of him and just
look at ‘em instead of shoot ‘em, but he wanted his decoys to look as natural
as he could possibly make ‘em, so he had to know how ducks really looked,
especially what they looked like on the water, ‘cause that’s what a decoy is
supposed to look like. It’s supposed to
look like a duck that’s sittin’ on the water, ‘cause that’s what a decoy does,
it sits on the water.
“Well now, Lem gained a reputation for makin’ decoys that
were better than anybody else’s, they were more natural, so he was gettin’ all
the decoy business he could handle. He
was sellin’ decoys as fast as he could make ‘em, so if you wanted him to make a
dozen decoys for you, he would put your name on his list, and he always sold
his ducks accordin’ to the list. You
might have to wait to get a dozen decoys from Lem, you had to wait ‘til your
name made it to the top of the list. Lem
had more orders for ducks than he could fill, so the wait might be pretty long.
“Steve was Lem’s younger brother. He liked to carve too, and he could make more
money at that than at catchin’ crabs, so he dropped out from bein’ a full time waterman,
and he became a barber like Lem, and he carved ducks, too. Steve became a really good carver, and he was
faster at it than Lem, but Lem was the better painter, so they went into
business together, Steve carvin’ and Lem paintin’ what Steve had carved. They were spendin’ a lot more time makin’ ducks
than they were cuttin’ hair, and that became a problem. Lem’s wife, her name was Thelma, she thought
carvin’ was just foolin’ around.
“Now Lem was sellin’ a lot of ducks, and
haircuts were only fifteen cents, so Lem was makin’ a lot more money with his
ducks than by cuttin’ hair, but Telma wouldn’t let up on him. She told him that he should spend more time
doin’ useful things like cuttin’ hair, ‘cause barberin’ was real work, but
carvin’ was just a waste of time. She
stayed on Lem’s back about spendin’ so much time just foolin’ around, and since
the barber shop was right beside the house, she was over there a lot, botherin’
him with things she wanted him to do, so Lem decided a change had to be
made.
Lem
let Steve have that shop next to the house, the shop their father had
built. They had been workin’ there
together, but Lem rented a small shop about a mile away, next to a grocery
store. Lem’s wife wouldn’t get on Steve
about makin’ ducks, ‘cause she wasn’t his wife, and the store was too far away
for her to bother Lem, ‘cause she was too fat to walk that distance, so the
brothers kept their partnership goin’ with Steve doin’ the carvin’ beside the
house and Lem doin’ the paintin’ next to the grocery store. They became known as the Ward Brothers, and
their reputation began to spread.
“The
local hunters all knew them, of course, but a lot of sport hunters were now
comin’ their way, hunters from Baltimore and from all parts of Pennsylvania,
and they saw the decoys the local watermen were usin’ and wanted some like ‘em. Those sport hunters would take their Ward
decoys home with ‘em and they’d brag about ‘em, and pretty soon lots more
hunters were comin’ here to the creek, just to buy Ward Brothers decoys. Not only hunters would come, some people were
gettin’ into collectin’ decoys, called it ‘wildfowl art’, and they’d pay more
for art than they would for a wooden bird you’d set out in the water and shoot
full of buckshot if the ducks got too close to ‘em.
“Lem
decided that they needed to go after that art business, so he and Steve made some
birds that looked better than just regular decoys. They called ‘em ‘mantlepiece birds,’ they
were different than regular decoys cause they were not meant to shoot over. They really looked good.
“One
of their collectors from Pennsylvania told Lem and Steve they should enter some
of their birds in the big wildfowl art show in New York City, He thought they could win a prize, so they
entered it, and he drove here to the creek and picked them up and he took them and
some of their ducks to the contest. They
came back with a whole basket full of blue ribbons. The judges up there had never seen decoys
like theirs before. You see, the judges
had made up a bunch of rules about how to judge the best decoys and the other
carvers were all makin’ their ducks accordin’ to the rules, so they all pretty
much looked alike, but Lem and Steve didn’t know the rules. They only knew what real ducks looked like
and that’s the way they made theirs. The
difference was plain to see, so the judges began to judge all the ducks in the
show by how they compared to the Ward ducks rather than how they compared to
the rules, and the Ward Brothers became the new standard for makin’ ducks. The value of their ducks went through the
ceiling.
“The
other carvers were makin’ decoys, but Lem and Steve were makin’ the wood come
alive,” The old storyteller said. “That’s
a big difference. Some people claim the
Ward Brothers were the pioneers of a new wildfowl art style, and who am I to
dispute that?”
A
couple of watermen came up the steps, so I’d have to wait until another day to
learn more about these carvers.
Author’s note:
Like other folklore, this tale has a scrap of truth in
it.
I did not have
to do any research to write this story, I lived it. Just like ‘The Turtle Hunter’, I wrote it
from my memory and from the stories I heard at the store by the head of the
creek. As a boy, I’d walk through the
field behind the house where I grew up, staying on the path along the crests of
the ditch banks to keep from getting my feet wet in the lowlands that separated
the houses of our community beside the creek, and I’d go to Steve Ward’s barber
shop on the road behind ours to get my hair cut. I can still remember it, a carpet of cedar
shavings covered the floor and Steve’s latest birds would be on display,
waiting to be picked up by the customer at the top of the list nailed to the
wall behind the barber chair.
People
can’t imagine how important duck making was when I was young. Steve told me that he and Lem had made more
than twenty thousand ducks in their career, all carved by hand. We can be sure
that will never happen again.
And I’ll never be able to adequately describe this way
of life that I experienced when I was growing up, but I’m doing the best I can,
and I’m trying to record as much as I can while I still can. Most of the old story tellers are now gone,
so I feel a responsibility to pass on what I saw and what I learned from them
before I go to join them, because I now have a lot more years behind me than in
front of me.
Glenn Lawson
The Ducks Bathroom
“You were telling me how the Ward brothers’ ducks became
known as wildfowl art,” I said, “and collectors began buying them, and their
value went up.”
”Yes sir,” the old storyteller said, “those ducks that
Lem and Steve made had value like real money.
In fact, Lem used ‘em for money, he’d trade a few for something he
needed when he didn’t have the money to pay for it, and that was often, like
the time he built the ducks bathroom.
“The
ducks bathroom?” I questioned.
“Yeah,
Lem didn’t have the money to pay for it. The only money Lem and Steve ever had was in
their pockets. They didn’t have bank
accounts, didn’t believe in banks.
“They’d sell a few ducks and put the money in their
pockets, and then they’d buy what they needed, and after they had everything they
needed, they’d give the rest of the money away.
They didn’t need to keep it, ‘cause all they had to do was make another
few ducks and they’d have plenty more money.
Lem was especially generous. He
was always lookin’ around for somebody who really needed enough to pay a doctor
bill or patch their roof, and he’d reach down into his pocket and take out the
money and hand it to them, but they weren’t supposed to tell anybody.
“In spite of all the help they were givin’ to the poor, a
lot of people around here questioned if they were Christians. People around here are very religious, and
they have their own way of judgin’ if others are good enough. Lem and Steve, you see, weren’t workin’ for
their livin,’ that’s what these people thought.
A man around here’s supposed to go out on his boat six days a week and
catch crabs or oysters, and the Ward brothers weren’t doin’ that, so they
weren’t workin.’ That means they
couldn’t be Christian, not on this creek.
“Didn’t matter that Jesus told a man he lacked only one
thing, he needed to sell what he had and give it to the poor. That was the standard Jesus set, but it
wasn’t good enough for people around here.
A man needed to catch crabs and oysters, or they wouldn’t associate with
him.
“So Lem and Steve spent a lot of lonely hours. Lem wrote on the bottom of a duck how much
the isolation hurt him. I remember the
exact words.
To be an artist is to hurt in silence,
To hear harsh words from loose tongues, To feel the pangs of hunger for understanding,
To sit alone in the long, lonesome hours when evening comes.
"In spite of all the good they were doin,’ the neighbors
never forgave ‘em for not meetin’ the community standard. Never associated with ‘em, 'cept the men
who came here to the store to sit and rest after a day on the boat. Steve was usually waitin' for 'em to come in.
“Lem and Steve never held it against anybody, they kept
doin’ the same as they had been doin.’
They kept makin’ their ducks, and they kept givin’ their money to the
people who needed it.
“Then, Thelma decided that she wanted indoor plumbin’
like some of her neighbors had. She didn’t want to keep goin’
outside to pump water and haul it to the kitchen in a bucket, and most of all,
she wanted an indoor bathroom so she wouldn’t have to walk in the rain to the
outhouse by the edge of the woods.
“Lem asked the neighborhood carpenter how much it would
cost, the carpenter said, ‘a lot of money,’ because he didn’t know how to
estimate a job. Lem knew he had a
problem. He’d never save up enough to
pay for it, however much it would cost, ‘cause whenever he had any money in his
pocket, he’d run across somebody who needed it and he’d give it away. He had to find a way to pay for it without
savin’ money.
“Lem was sellin’ a lot of mantle piece birds to
collectors. A doctor from Baltimore had told
Lem that whenever he had a bird that was especially good to call, so Lem
made an especially good duck for him.
“When the doctor came to pick it up, he asked how much
Lem wanted for it. He had enough cash in
his pocket to pay for it, the doctor knew that Lem dealt only in cash.
“When the doctor held out the money to pay for it, Lem
told him to put it back in his pocket and keep up with how much he owed. Lem said he’d tell him when he needed
it. Lem went right to the carpenter and
told him to start work.
“Every couple of weeks, Lem would have a duck ready. Every time, the doctor brought cash, and
every time, Lem asked how much he owed and told him to put it back in his
pocket. After a few months, the doctor
came to pick up his duck and Lem asked how much he owed, and the doctor told
him. Lem said, ‘That’s enough,’ and he
took the money and he went to the carpenter and paid him.
“We call that ‘the ducks bathroom,’ ‘cause Lem paid for
it with ducks.
“Years later, Thelma needed surgery. The same doctor told Lem he could pay for it
with ducks. The doctor paid the hospital
bill, and Lem paid him for that with ducks.
Author’s note:
The
scrap of truth behind this story is that Ida, Lem Ward’s daughter, told me how
her father saved the money for the bathroom her mother wanted, and how he paid
for the surgery she needed in a Baltimore
Glenn
Lawson
The Ducks Retirement Fund
“You were telling me how the Ward brothers used their
ducks like money,” I said to the old storyteller as I stepped onto the porch
overlooking the creek. He was slicing
thin strips from the piece of wood in his hand, and it was beginning to
resemble the head of a duck, maybe.
“You told me they took only cash when they sold a duck,
and they gave most of it away to their poor neighbors. Did they ever put any away so they could
retire?”
“Lem
never thought about the future, ‘cept he thought about the next duck he would
make. Makin’ ducks was all that was ever
on his mind. I remember hearin’ somebody
ask, ‘What’s the best duck you ever made?’
‘The next one,’ Lem told him.
“Lem was an artist, and all he thought about was his art,
and how to make it better. That’s what
put him at the forefront of wildfowl artists.
While others were chasin’ him, tryin’ to make somethin’ as good as what
he had made, he was busy makin’ somethin’ better.
“Steve, he did try to think about the future. He worried about Ida, Lem’s daughter. The Wards were a close family, the brothers
both lived in the house that belonged to Travis. After he died, Ida quit work and moved back
to the house to take care of her mother, who was sufferin’ from a lot of illness,
and to take care of her daddy and Steve.
“Steve had married, but his wife couldn’t stand all that
togetherness, so she moved out. Ida ran
the house and kept them fed, while Lem and Steve made their ducks to bring in
the money.
“Steve worried about what would happen to Ida when he and
Lem became too old to make ducks anymore, and he came up with a plan. He knew that their ducks were better than any
others he had seen, and he believed that someday they would be recognized as
art and would be worth a lot of money.
“So, without tellin’ anybody, not even Lem, Steve began
puttin’ ducks away. Every few weeks he’d
carry a finished duck up into the attic, signed and dated by him and Lem. They were makin’ so many ducks Lem never missed
one every few weeks. Steve didn’t
understand finances, but he believed those ducks would someday become valuable,
so Ida’s retirement fund grew until it almost filled the attic.
“Steve’s eyesight went bad and he was afraid he’d chop
off his hand with his hatchet, so he quit carvin.’ Then, Lem had a stroke, so they had no income
and no money in the bank, but they had friends.
Some of these friends had established an organization to promote
wildfowl art, and had named it The Ward
Brothers Foundation. Ida always found
enough money to pay the bills and to take care of Lem and Steve. Their friends had obviously stepped in to
help when they needed it, but the left hand never knew what the right hand was
doin.’ Nobody knows who was helpin.’
“Steve’s health was failin’ fast, and he knew his time
was short. He told Ida to look in the
attic, he had put somethin’ up there to keep her after he was gone. Ida looked, and she called one of their
friends at the foundation, he called a wildfowl art appraiser. That attic held a history of the development
of wildfowl art, decoys that showed the evolution of the craft with dates on
them.
“Ida
had her retirement fund, and it all came from ducks.”
Author’s note:
The
scrap of truth behind this story is that Steve Ward once told me he always
believed the ducks he and Lem were making would someday become valuable, and
that he had been putting some away in the attic for many years. Another scrap of truth is that a friend of the
Wards, a prominent member of the Ward Brothers Foundation , arranged for the
sale of the ducks in the attic. I
believe the ducks were moved to become the possession of the Ward Museum of
Wildfowl Art in Salisbury, Maryland, they may still be there. The Ward museum is a magical place to visit,
and a major force in promoting wildfowl art in America. It hosts an annual contest to select the
outstanding wildfowl art created during the previous year, and the winners of every
class are on display. This is not a
museum devoted to dead things, it is a splendid example of ‘wood made alive.’ I recommend you visit it and witness for
yourself the evolution of the American wildfowl art movement. Included is an exhibit that shows the
importance of Lem and Steve Ward in the formation of this truly American form
of Art. To learn more about the Ward
Museum of Wildfowl Art, use Google to search for ‘wildfowl art museum salisbury’
and it will lead you to the museum website.
You will be impressed.
Thank
you for allowing me to share with you my folklore tales about two wildfowl
artists I knew from the time of my childhood on this little creek, and later came
to be my friends even though many years separated our ages.
Glenn Lawson
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