The WOOD BEE CARVER likes to tinker and doodle with ideas and innovations that spring from childhood memories.  Perhaps that is one of the motivations for carving one’s creative ideas that come on the journey of carving wood.  As a boy growing up on a little farm “three miles South of Poneto, Indiana,” I made many of my toys many of which were whittled using a pocket knife.  That same childlike thrill of discovery and home made creativity spills over into an “old man’s toy” as is evidenced by the PONETO TOOL CADDY just created.

My good friend Larry Piety who lives East of Poneto is making me a professionally designed and furniture quality tool caddy using his woodworking skills.  I had to tease him, as I so often do about Poneto, with the development of an inexpensive, no frills tool caddy made out of a plastic coffee container and paper tubes.  Surprisingly this innovative tool caddy can be used in any carver’s carving area since we carvers always need a place for the every growing inventory of carving tools.

The two photographs above are self explanatory as to the final results of taking a plastic coffee container and cutting paper tubes or three quarter inch  plastic PVC pipe to height that will fit inside the coffee container.  The PVC pipe costs under two dollars for eight foot length at home improvement stores.  Cutting  the PVC pipe to four inches length to fit into the coffee container would result in enough tubes to make several tool caddies.  Thick paper tubes are not as easy to find unless one knows a commercial establishment that disposes of them for free as I did a few years ago.  Please note that from childhood experience of growing up “three miles South of Poneto, Indiana” one learns not to throw anything away and finds a use for what others throw away.

Poneto, Indiana today, like so many small villages at the cross roads of time, is not like it was when I was growing up three miles South of my beloved village of memory.  In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s Poneto boasted a population of a couple hundred people along with two grocery stores, a hardware store, two grain elevators, two gas stations and a post office.  But even more than that it was a place for boyhood memories and simple values to be embedded in my personality as a continued influence of a cherished time.

It was the home of a beloved old man that I called “Grandpa Bill” who, even though no family relationship was my adopted grandpa.  His kindness, generosity, good humor and down to earth human gentleness endeared him to me and my lasting gratitude.  He told me that Poneto got its name from an Indian princess who once lived in the area and that there was no other town in America that bore the name of “Poneto.” Poneto is in Wells County, Indiana and located South of Bluffton which is located South of Ft. Wayne. It remains a small village of two hundred forty population in reality but in memory it is the enormous place to journey to again because memory has no boundry nor contraint to the joy of remembering.

The WOOD BEE CARVER lives in another town and state now but forever will be the boy who grew up “three miles South of Poneto, Indiana.”