A Cutting Board

With my Dad, chickens ready to be carved.

Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, my dad had a cutting board that he used to carve roasted chickens, legs of lamb, spareribs, turkeys, braised meats, and prime ribs of beef. After my parents passed away and my siblings and I were cleaning out the contents of their house, I felt a strong pull to have that board in my kitchen. Luckily, none of my siblings cared about it, so I took it home, and I’ve used it ever since.

On the one hand, it’s just a simple slab of wood made for a utilitarian purpose, but the people who use it carry their own mix of loss and love.

Gerber Trencher Cutting Board

Patent no. 2,665,016.
Richard Hudson, designer
Gerber Legendary Blades Company
West Linn, Oregon

An oval walnut slab, milled and sanded, has aged more than fifty years to the color of perfectly cooked caramel just before the cream. The raised edge sustained except for one side where the lip ends, has been gouged, dropped from the height of a kitchen counter. The board slants, a slight grade down from the front, is unevenly worn rough by thousands of vertical knife cuts. Thin, healed scars. This is where the bulk of the work occurred. My father, standing over it at the red linen Formica counter. Occasionally, he’d put down the carving knife to reach for a thick-bottomed, Steuben glass. Old Grand Dad Bourbon over ice with a splash of water. His fingers would wrap it protectively, each time his wedding ring clinking lightly against the cold glass. Most men he knew at the time didn’t wear such a ring, but years into their marriage my mother had given it as an anniversary gift. He liked to show it off. He had, after all, forsaken his family for her. A deep rift with his sister and he moved his family thirteen hundred miles away. When asked, his usually warm voice turned cold as the ice in his drink. He’d only say she was insensitive to my wife. No regrets. The knife edge has begun to flake flecks of walnut from the board. Unusable. To sand it smooth would try to return it to what it was. I bury it in the back of the cupboard.