Life is full of facts, some interesting, some obviously incriminating. The Bible itself is replete with warnings secreted in the book of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, and of course other writings from the sages of cultures not mentioned in the Bible. “For by wise counsel shall thou make thy war, and in multitude of counselors there is safety.” Proverbs 24:6 (Also read Proverbs 13:16; 25:8; or read Luke 14:28)

Whenever I think of this kind of circumstance and warning about “counting the cost” before going to war or just building something, I remember when there was an unfinished house we used to pass every time we went down a nearby street that obviously told a story. The house never was completed once they got the concrete block walls laid. At first only a few weeks went by, then a few months and still no roof, interior walls, doors or windows. Then several years passed until finally someone, most likely not the original builder finished that house.

I was in our favorite old-fashioned grocery store the other day and could not help but notice the well-worn butcher block where their butchers had apparently chopped, trimmed and cut up thousands of cuts of meat. But the wear on that “new” butcher block looked strange because great dips were all over that top with voids at least 1-1/2” or more deep. Questioning the butcher I said that block doesn’t look that old to be used that much. Grinning, the butcher said, “The guy didn’t make it right.” Then it was obvious the butcher block lacked a primary essential—the top had not been made or put together using lumber with end grain as the top or working surface. This butcher block was someone’s mistake and I could not help but wonder how long it took for the butcher shop to discover that error. Let’s face it, you would think “someone” who knew what a butcher block was supposed to look like would notice it but apparently when this new butcher block was delivered they were so busy no one took the time to notice the carpenter simply did not know what he needed to know about making a butcher block. So, obviously they had decided to go ahead and use the thing, right or wrong, but I imagine that carpenter was told in no uncertain arrangement of words that the butcher block he made was a lemon!

Have you ever tried to do something that you soon learned you should never have started? A quote I came across recently is a classic: “If you don’t know what you don’t know, you’re in real trouble.” I first heard that on C-Span as a politician told his sad story of becoming a failure in a very short time because he got involved in a job that required more knowledge and information than he had and he admitted to his interviewer, “I was just in the position of not knowing what I didn’t know.” As soon as he said that I could think of dozens of applications for that country wisdom. I say country wisdom because it seems far too many “city slickers” or what the military called “90 Day wonders” get themselves (and others) into deep trouble because they simply did not know that they did now know, or to put it another way, “too late smart”.

Life is full of circumstances that require a “Master’s Degree” in this field. People who were raised during the Great Depression, or as I hinted at, in the country where financial resources are not as handy as those living “in the big city” and they had learned to “do with what they had” and that develops a talent in a person that can make him (her) look like a genius. People like that often heard, “How in the world did you do that?” Simple, they learned the hard way and what they had was not handed to them on a silver platter or merely “given to them” or bought at a hardware store—they earned their knowledge the hard way. End-grain wooden surfaces are nothing new or surprising to professional carpenters who make butcher blocks or heavy-traffic floor surfaces. A newspaper plant I used to frequent as a youth had what looked like a strange floor to me – it looked like little cubes of wood. Actually that is about what that floor was, little cubes of end-grain lumber. End-grain lumber has been used for decades where the traffic demanded a surface that could stand or endure extreme weight and traffic of heavy-laden “turtles” or carts of type forms weighing hundreds, maybe even thousands of pounds of lead type forms. Linoleum or asphalt tile would simply not do the job. A butcher block, properly made with lumber milled and pieced together with blocks of wood cut specifically to expose the end-grain might outlast the lifetime of the butcher in a busy meat shop. This shop I visited was a perfect example for that unique quote: “If you don’t know what you don’t know, you’re in real trouble.”

THE WORDWRIGHT