Follow the Dirt Road in Your Soul to Humbug Mountain

Timeless Wooden Toys and Sage Bundles Keep This Old Man Going

By Carol Mell, 11-30-06

	Above: Russell Whiteman, 94, makes wooden toys in summer and ties ceremonial smudge bundles in winter. Below: Whiteman's daughter Wendy Whiteman keeps a teepee out front for healing ceremonies.

When your life is inching toward the century mark, and you passed retirement 30 years ago, how do you bridge the generations and stay connected?

For Russell Whiteman, 94, the answer is to make timeless wooden toys. Even in the age of electronic bells, whistles and sirens, he believes his wooden trucks, cars and wagons fueled by imagination are still fun.

"Kids still like to push these around," said Whiteman. "These give them something to move that fits their hands. Many people tell me they are buying them for their grandchildren."

Some people start their Christmas planning late, like arguing with the tired store clerk to stay open so you can buy the last ham on Christmas Eve, but Whiteman plans and works all summer to have his toys ready for the post-Thanksgiving fair.

"I finished early this year," he said. "I was done in October."

While it's true that he has no heat in his little workshop, he's the kind of industrious person who would have finished early anyway.

Nearly 10 years ago, when his beloved wife, Hildegard, had Alzheimer's, the Whitemans left their upstate New York farm, where they raised a passel of kids and Arabian horses, to live with their youngest daughter, Wendy Whiteman. His wife passed away, but he has stayed on in the apartment they shared at their daughter's house. Their home is a quiet place out past the gorge bridge with nothing but the wind for company. Snow flurries were blowing in November, but this old man is never bored.

"I've seen a lot during my lifetime, World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam and now this crazy war."

He’s a spry man, and jumped up to fetch a memoir he wrote to leave his family. After he retired he thought toys were something he could make and sell, a way to help the church.

"I was general manager of a tank truck company and in trucking for 44 years. After I retired in 1977, I started making toys for the women's missions of our church in East Aurora, New York. I had no lessons so I learned by doing. A friend sent me an old book on woodworking. There was something there I've always liked."

He jumped up again to find the notebook where he wrote this quote in his impeccable penmanship. He didn't write down the author.

" 'Man has an affinity for wood,' '' he read, " 'not only as a material but as a kindred spirit to love and to know.' ''

If it seems like he has all the time in the world to make a boothful of toys to sell at the Christmas Fair, consider that Whiteman made the doors for his daughter's house and his apartment as well as bookcases and clever collapsible tables. He also keeps the books for his daughter's "Wolfwalker Collection" business.
As Cherokee Russell, he works year-round tying thousands of sage, cedar and lavender smudge bundles for her, and always has them drying by his front door so the place smells wonderful.

He only recently retired from keeping handwritten books for the church, a job he would still have if not for computers.

"When I finish all this I read," he said.

When I asked how many toys he made this year, he got out another careful ledger book and counted up.

"I have 77 pieces," he said, "$859 worth.” These include brightly painted trucks and race cars, station wagons, stick trucks, fully loaded log trucks and stock trucks with gates that lift out, loaded with cattle or horses. The bay mare that pulls a cart was modeled after one of Whiteman's show horses. He is proud of his new silver tank truck. “The toys sell for $1 to $25. I don't get anything for my labor, of course. I keep some back for supplies and the rest goes to my church, First Presbyterian Church of Taos, for children and youth."

Who will do this when he is gone?

"For me it is therapy. I'm getting arthritis in my shoulders that handicaps me a little, but I'm not going to quit."

You can see Cherokee Russell’s sage bundles at www.wolfwalkercollection.com
You can learn more about First Presbyterian Church at www.firstpresbyterianchurch.presbychurch.org

Carol Mell's column, Taos Hum, is published every other Thursday in the Albuquerque Journal North.

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