Clothespin Building Sticks

Joe Lewis of Cedar Rapids has been staying busy this winter building scale models of things we see every day out of an unusual material -- wooden clothespins. He also uses Popsicle sticks and small wooden dowels. Here's my column about him from today's Gazette:

CEDAR RAPIDS - With a piano here, a TV set there, a swing set over here and an outhouse there, Joe Lewis turns clothespins, Popsicle sticks and dowels into scale models of things we take for granted every day.

“You name it, I've made it,” smiles Joe, 64, through his salt and pepper beard.

He's even made a kitchen sink.

“You give him some glue and he goes crazy,” says Jean Greiner, one of Joe's neighbors at Evergreen Estates, an assisted living facility in Cedar Rapids. “He comes up with the greatest things.”

A stove with pennies for burners. A tissue holder that looks like a log cabin. A matching chair and sofa.

“I make one thing and then I think of something else,” says Joe, living here since November because dementia has set in.

Barbara, his wife since 1964, lives just a couple of blocks away in their apartment. Since fall, Joe required too much care for her to handle alone. She visits him every day, often takes him to lunch, just hangs out.

Their love has lasted for 46 years. They've raised three children. Joe has always worked, even when jobs have been tough to find, even in fourth grade when he made 50 cents a week helping a custodian set up cafeteria tables.

A stove with pennies for burners. A tissue holder that looks like a log cabin. A matching chair and sofa.

“I make one thing and then I think of something else,” says Joe, living here since November because dementia has set in.

Set back by a stroke in ‘94, Joe ran into other health problems, too. An allergic reaction to medication and dementia knocked him down but not out last year.

Joe's hat, one he wears often, reads: “All I want is less to do, more time to do it, and more pay for not getting it done.”

“I like it fine here,” he says, “but I'd rather be home.”

So Joe makes the best of what life has to offer.

He bakes cookies at home - coconut, chocolate chip, Tootsie Roll, even tomato or hot dog, although not too often - and gives them to friends.

He opens bags of clothespins, digs around in the handy dish of parts and scissors and pens, creates a chair here, a jewelry chest there.

He smiles a lot, not sure what he'll build next but knowing that he has a lot of stuff to give away for small donations so he can buy more supplies.

Insisting that I take something as I leave - an outhouse, a tissue holder, even a kitchen sink - Joe hands me a red, yellow and purple wishing well made of the tiniest clothespins. It won't even hold a penny, but it shows wishes can come true.