PLEASANT GARDEN - Sometimes, David Goltare is hard to understand.
He lost his voice box to cancer in 1989. So, when he puts his fingers over the small hole in his throat, he speaks in a voice that sounds like snow tires against gravel.
But really, you don't need to listen. You simply need to look - and let your imagination fly.
Goltare makes old-fashioned toys. He uses wood you've never heard of and creates grasshoppers, ducks, dogs, lighthouses, tractors, trucks, trains and even a 1932 Lincoln.
He makes about 70 types of toys - about 700 a year - and hauls them in his van across the South to craft shows, like this weekend's Craftsmen's Christmas Classic at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex.
Goltare fancies himself a woodman, a guy who, as he says, spends his days "piddling, fiddling and diddling."
But he's more like a modern-day Gepetto. He uses a few tools - a band saw, a scroll saw, a sander, a lathe - and turns planks of wood into his own personal Pinocchio.
Look at them, and you'd think they could come to life.
Of course, they don't. But listen to his stories about the people who buy his toys. It'll make you wonder, and maybe believe.
Take the one about the farmer's son. He's from somewhere around here.
When the boy was 4, he began buying Goltare's tractors, pickups, log trucks - anything farm-related - to create his own make-believe farm on his bedroom floor.
When the boy turned 11, he moved on to other things. But not before he came by to see Goltare, tell him thanks and hear his mother retell an episode from a recent toy-buying trip.
"Mom, these toys aren't as good as Mr. Goltare's," he told his mom.
"I know, sweetheart," she responded.
Goltare loves that story, and when he tells it, he laughs, smiles his crooked smile and talks in his froggy voice about his love for making toys.
He believes his creations spark the imagination of a child, or even an adult, to see a different world, a different place, where wooden toys talk, quack, bark, chug, whistle or motor down Main Street.
It's easy to understand why. Goltare is 75, an engineer by training, a toy maker by chance.
In the 1960s, when astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil "Gus'' Grissom helped Americans dream big, Goltare worked at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Goltare was buddies with Grissom. And like those astronauts, Goltare was athlete intense. Back then, his boss called him "young David," a reference to the Old Testament story about David and Goliath.
Goltare took on everybody.
"Jesus,'' he says today, "I was a tough guy."
He later moved from the Space Coast to the Land of Textiles here in North Carolina. He became a plant engineer for Guilford Mills and later Burlington Industries and supervised dozens of employees.
Yet, more than 20 years ago, he started feeling a bit shaky, and he couldn't shake a nagging sore throat. At first, doctors found nothing. Then, after a biopsy, they found the worst: cancer at the base of Goltare's tongue.
In February 1989, after a nine-hour operation, Goltare - a nonsmoker with no family history of cancer - lost half his tongue and all his voice.
For a year, Goltare couldn't speak. He lay on his couch. He thought he might as well die because his life as an engineer - rocket-smart, laser-focused - was over.
But Valentina, his wife of 28 years, didn't let that happen.
"What are you going to do?'' she asked him.
"I haven't the foggiest," he said.
"Well, get off that damn couch," she told him, "and go out and find something to do.''
He did. With the help of his neighbor named Paul. And his neighbor's gift: a slab of walnut.
"Here, Dave," Paul said, "try to make something out of it."
Goltare had no tools. So, he went to Sears and bought a scroll saw and a sander. He made a few pigs and painted them pink. They were, as Valentina says today, "just awful."
But Goltare kept at it. He used his engineer acumen. He got better.
Today, 15 years later, after accumulating his own tools and building his own "dang bench," Goltare could be one of the best.
Sure, it's his toys. But it's also his conviction.
On almost any given weekday, you'll find Goltare in his tiny wood shop in his garage. There, from the early morning to the waning light, he'll sand and saw and cut and sand again - sometimes as many as five or six times - until his intercom squawks to life.
Then, he hears Valentina and her musical accent, born from her upbringing in Russia.
"It's time to come in!"
But until that happens, Goltare remains in his toy maker world. He works on his designs, plucked from pictures in a magazine or pictures he plucked from his head.
Around him, the sawdust may shimmer like tiny snowflakes from the sunlight angling through one of his windows. He pays it no mind. There, in his tiny wood shop, he's happy. He feels at home.
Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com
Source: news-record.com
He lost his voice box to cancer in 1989. So, when he puts his fingers over the small hole in his throat, he speaks in a voice that sounds like snow tires against gravel.
But really, you don't need to listen. You simply need to look - and let your imagination fly.
Goltare makes old-fashioned toys. He uses wood you've never heard of and creates grasshoppers, ducks, dogs, lighthouses, tractors, trucks, trains and even a 1932 Lincoln.
He makes about 70 types of toys - about 700 a year - and hauls them in his van across the South to craft shows, like this weekend's Craftsmen's Christmas Classic at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex.
Goltare fancies himself a woodman, a guy who, as he says, spends his days "piddling, fiddling and diddling."
But he's more like a modern-day Gepetto. He uses a few tools - a band saw, a scroll saw, a sander, a lathe - and turns planks of wood into his own personal Pinocchio.
Look at them, and you'd think they could come to life.
Of course, they don't. But listen to his stories about the people who buy his toys. It'll make you wonder, and maybe believe.
Take the one about the farmer's son. He's from somewhere around here.
When the boy was 4, he began buying Goltare's tractors, pickups, log trucks - anything farm-related - to create his own make-believe farm on his bedroom floor.
When the boy turned 11, he moved on to other things. But not before he came by to see Goltare, tell him thanks and hear his mother retell an episode from a recent toy-buying trip.
"Mom, these toys aren't as good as Mr. Goltare's," he told his mom.
"I know, sweetheart," she responded.
Goltare loves that story, and when he tells it, he laughs, smiles his crooked smile and talks in his froggy voice about his love for making toys.
He believes his creations spark the imagination of a child, or even an adult, to see a different world, a different place, where wooden toys talk, quack, bark, chug, whistle or motor down Main Street.
It's easy to understand why. Goltare is 75, an engineer by training, a toy maker by chance.
In the 1960s, when astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil "Gus'' Grissom helped Americans dream big, Goltare worked at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Goltare was buddies with Grissom. And like those astronauts, Goltare was athlete intense. Back then, his boss called him "young David," a reference to the Old Testament story about David and Goliath.
Goltare took on everybody.
"Jesus,'' he says today, "I was a tough guy."
He later moved from the Space Coast to the Land of Textiles here in North Carolina. He became a plant engineer for Guilford Mills and later Burlington Industries and supervised dozens of employees.
Yet, more than 20 years ago, he started feeling a bit shaky, and he couldn't shake a nagging sore throat. At first, doctors found nothing. Then, after a biopsy, they found the worst: cancer at the base of Goltare's tongue.
In February 1989, after a nine-hour operation, Goltare - a nonsmoker with no family history of cancer - lost half his tongue and all his voice.
For a year, Goltare couldn't speak. He lay on his couch. He thought he might as well die because his life as an engineer - rocket-smart, laser-focused - was over.
But Valentina, his wife of 28 years, didn't let that happen.
"What are you going to do?'' she asked him.
"I haven't the foggiest," he said.
"Well, get off that damn couch," she told him, "and go out and find something to do.''
He did. With the help of his neighbor named Paul. And his neighbor's gift: a slab of walnut.
"Here, Dave," Paul said, "try to make something out of it."
Goltare had no tools. So, he went to Sears and bought a scroll saw and a sander. He made a few pigs and painted them pink. They were, as Valentina says today, "just awful."
But Goltare kept at it. He used his engineer acumen. He got better.
Today, 15 years later, after accumulating his own tools and building his own "dang bench," Goltare could be one of the best.
Sure, it's his toys. But it's also his conviction.
On almost any given weekday, you'll find Goltare in his tiny wood shop in his garage. There, from the early morning to the waning light, he'll sand and saw and cut and sand again - sometimes as many as five or six times - until his intercom squawks to life.
Then, he hears Valentina and her musical accent, born from her upbringing in Russia.
"It's time to come in!"
But until that happens, Goltare remains in his toy maker world. He works on his designs, plucked from pictures in a magazine or pictures he plucked from his head.
Around him, the sawdust may shimmer like tiny snowflakes from the sunlight angling through one of his windows. He pays it no mind. There, in his tiny wood shop, he's happy. He feels at home.
Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com
Source: news-record.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment