Band Saw Man

As I was surfing the net on a lazy summer day a few years back, I decided to try to find my old buddy, Johnny Holtz, to see how he was doing.

Since the time was pre-google, I did an excite search for an email addresses for John Holtz. I thought I had found an email address for him in Frampton, West Virginia but soon discovered that the address was for John the father, not the son. Since this time was pre-phishing days, the search result included a telephone number and an address, so I decided to call.

A nice lady answered the phone. She happened to be John the Elder’s second wife. I had only met her once, because I had left the area soon after their marriage. She said that John the Elder had Alzheimer’s and was on his last legs. But, Johnny the son still lived in Frampton and she thought that he would enjoy talking to me, so she gave me his unlisted number. I inquired if he had an email address since that would be an easier communication device, but she responded that Johnny hadn’t embraced the new world of the internet so I would have to call him.

With some trepidation, I dialed his number and immediately got an answer. I knew it was Johnny speaking even though I hadn’t heard his voice for thirty years. I was initially afraid that he might not remember me or didn’t want to talk, but that wasn’t the case at all. His initial response to my greeting was somewhat strange though.

After inquiring how I got his unlisted number, he immediately announced to his compatriots that he was talking to “Band Saw.” As I was trying to think back to that earlier time to discern why I was the Band Saw Man, I heard Stevie, Johnny’s younger brother, roar his approval. I still didn’t get the joke.

Stevie immediately took the phone and greeted me warmly. After some perfunctory conversation, I inquired about the reference to “Band Saw.” He laughed and gave the phone back to Johnny so he could tell me.

Johnny let out a burst of laughter and then said that there was an incident back when we were in school when I had saved their butts from a beating by reinstalling a blade on a band saw before John the Elder got home from work. Ah, yes, I now remembered that afternoon’s events.

Johnny and Stevie had a habit of sneaking into their dad’s workshop and playing with the tools. John the Elder had his own Home Depot in his workshop. He had one of everything. The boys liked to play with the power tools, of course. In fact, they would sometimes go into the shop and turn on several power tools at once just to hear the cacophony of sound. They would continue to turn on tools until the circuit breakers would blow.

To my knowledge, they never used the tools to actually make anything. As boys of that age tended to be, they were more destructive than constructive.

So, inevitably, they were bound to break one of the pricey tools. That afternoon, Johnny was trying to cut a broom handle into pieces using the band saw, but he put too much diametrical pressure on the blade and it jumped its track. The boys panicked because John the Elder was due to arrive home in only a few minutes.

Since John the Elder was a strict disciplinarian, the boys knew what punishment would be doled out if they were caught. They made a few futile attempts to put the band saw blade back on to its track, but they couldn’t think clearly because of the impending confrontation with their dad.

Luckily, I happened to be in the area at that time. I usually sneaked up to John the Elder’s apple orchard every chance I got to have a leisurely cigarette break from my mother who thought that I was her personal servant. You know the drill: cut that grass, take out that garbage, wash that car, blah, blah, blah.

I should say that I was only two years older than Johnny and four years older than Stevie, but when you are fourteen, that’s an eternity in teenage years.

Johnny ran out of the workshop and quickly spotted me lazily smoking a Pall Mall while lounging on a bench in the orchard.

After hearing Johnny’s cry for assistance in alleviating impending doom, I volunteered to attempt to fix the band saw. I quickly removed the cover housing and discerned that the drive shaft holding the two pulleys which controlled the blade needed to be released before the blade could be reinserted correctly. I easily released the shaft via a quick connect switch, reattached the blade, connected the shaft and reinstalled the cover housing.

With no time to spare, the three of us ran out of the shop. I headed back to the apple orchard and the two boys ran inside their house. Within minutes, I saw John the Elder pull into his garage. We nonchalantly exchanged greetings as he entered the house.

The next day, Johnny told me that his dad had used the band saw that night and that it had worked perfectly. So, he and Stevie had avoided the sting of punishment for that day. Of course, they got into other trouble the day after, so it was only a one day reprieve. But, apparently they remembered how I had saved them for those few hours.

So, I apparently became the Band Saw Man in their minds. It was a moniker with which I was not totally enamored but which could have given me a modicum of pride if I had known about it.
Johnny and I had shared many experiences which, in my mind, were more eventful and worth remembering: the trips to Valley Falls, the street races in Grafton, the times we sneaked into the west side stadium by clamoring up the outside walls to watch our home team play football. But, the most vivid memory for him was the day I fixed the band saw.

When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming a super hero, Superman or Spiderman. But, instead, I became Band Saw Man.

During our brief conversation, we talked of our shared experiences, I thanked him for being my friend, he gave me a right back at you, and that was it.

I hung up the phone, and went back to surfing. I wondered what John May was up to. Maybe he has an email address…