Have Broadax-Will Time Travel

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PLOWBOY: How did your studies at Duke influence your thinking?

UNDERHILL: I came to the realization that working with wood is a fundamental human experience. Homo sapiens and hardwood trees appeared on Earth at about the same time, and the essential connection between man and wood dates back to when our ancestors were swinging in trees; they developed an intuitive knowledge of how strong the next branch would be. Present-day analytical faculties and motorcoordination skills are inherited capabilities based on innumerable generations of humans working with wood and other natural materials. I believe that most of us have an instinctive feel for shaping wood into useful items, and that when we cultivate this ability, it develops our confidence in our senses and increases our understanding of how we relate to the material world.

PLOWBOY: While you were pursuing your graduate work, then, did you find a way to communicate these concepts?

UNDERHILL: Yes. I started teaching people—right in my own backyard down by the Eno River in Hillsborough—how to work with wood. I held workshops and consulted with small museums that wanted to set up programs in traditional woodworking. I advertised in museum journals, "Have broadax, will travel," to get jobs.

PLOWBOY: The Eno River? That's where the woodwright's shop, the one featured in the opening of your television program, is located, right?

UNDERHILL: Yes, that's the shop. The original one is located at West Point on the Eno, a historic site near Durham, North Carolina. In 1975 I'd managed to scrape enough capital together to open a place where I could work and teach. I'd wanted to purchase one particular crudely built blacksmith shop—it dated from 1900 or so—and was negotiating to get it. In fact, I'd already started rebuilding the shop when the deal fell through. The place was sold out from under me; it was eventually torn down, and a fast-food drive-in was built on the site. I was heartbroken.

PLOWBOY: That was one of your darkest hours?

UNDERHILL: Oh, I had a lot of false starts; there were some disappointing times and many dark hours. But then I found a partner who wanted me to build a blacksmith shop. He'd gotten started, but progress had pretty much come to a standstill. I agreed to take over the project, build the shop, equip it, and run it. So I just advertised, offering some classes in timber-framing . . .

PLOWBOY:. . . and people showed up and helped you build it, right?

UNDERHILL: Right. It was a wonderful experience. A lot of those who helped still feel a part of that building. Well, we got the shop going and I started teaching how to make rakes and shovels and rocking chairs and so forth. The teaching was going great, but still it was sometimes scary. It can be a worrisome thing when you've got a dozen people flailing the air with axes all at once.

About this time—during 1976, I guess—I started thinking about doing a television series to present the skills I was teaching: how to make useful items from wood without power equipment. Also, a bit later, my first daughter was born and I decided I had to do more than teach and make wooden rakes that sold for $12 each. I was starting a family; it was time to get serious. So I started trying to make connections with people in television.

PLOWBOY: Because of your theater work, you weren't entirely a novice in TV, were you?

UNDERHILL: No, I did have some background. I'd even talked several times to the folks at the PBS affiliate in Chapel Hill, but my ideas just hadn't hit at the right time. At this point, though, I decided the moment for the final pitch had come. I made an appointment with the program director and went in there wearing my hat—the one you see me wear on the show—and my red suspenders. I had rakes and shovels and chairs I'd made draped all over me, and I carried an ax and a toolbox. I'd tried this tactic before when I'd tried to get other jobs, and sometimes it had worked.

Well, I walked in and plopped down in front of the program director's desk. I said I had a TV series ready to go. I said, "You want to do `The Woodwright's Shop'. . . if you don't, somebody else will." And as a result they came out and shot a pilot show with me at my shop.

However, I didn't hear anything for a long time.

PLOWBOY: So you'd given it your best shot, and it seemed as if there'd be no TV show. What was your backup plan?

UNDERHILL: In the meantime, I'd written to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia. They'd previously asked me whether I'd be interested in starting a traditional housewrighting program up there. But I didn't hear from them for a long time either. I was getting more and more desperate.

PLOWBOY: Since you're now on television and employed by Colonial Williamsburg, things obviously came around. How did that happen?

UNDERHILL: It was spring, and my bees had started to swarm. I was losing my hives, and I knew I had to go out and get them. I ended up climbing high in this box elder tree to catch a swarm-something I'd never done before. It was a real low point; I thought I might just have to give up. I sat there in the tree and said to myself, "The bees are gone . . . I'm going to have to stop doing what I want to do . . . I've got to give up dreaming about what I want to do and find some kind of profession that society values."

To make a long story short, I caught the swarm, got down from the tree, and managed to climb down the ladder with all these honeybees, thinking all the while, "I could fall and get stung to death." But I managed to get them back in the hive.

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