When I was still in grade school I would spend my summers at my grandfather’s farm.
My aunt, who lived in town, was very much into antiques and at times I would help her refinish them.
If she had one that was broken somehow, she had become a good customer of an older guy in town that had a woodshop.
He had a long thin building that stretched alongside the RR tracks.
He would sometimes show me how the various tools worked.
I thought the wood lathe was amazing.
How fast he could make a matching spindle to what she would bring in.
Sometimes while we waited.
One day while they were talking I wondered around the shop and came across what looked like a lathe.
But it was about 20 feet between centers.
It was under the windows that faced the RR tracks.
He told me it was indeed a lathe.
He had built it and used it once to build the porch pillars for the local dentist's house.
On the way home, my aunt drove by the house.
There were 4 pillars, 2 stories tall, each had a 4 foot section of twist in them.
I never did find out how he did the matching twists.
All this in a town of about 200 people.
