Albany man has flair for wood wagons, boxes

The first box that James Garvin built wasn't your typical box. It was a wheelbarrow. "This was the early 1930s, and all we had were wood stoves for heating and cooking," recalled Garvin, 89. "My dad put me in charge of hauling wood from the wood pile to the house, so I built a wheelbarrow out of a plow wheel." Garvin has been making boxes for more than 40 years, starting with domino and card boxes. Some boxes are tiny; others are trunk size. All are made from recycled wood, and a few sport decorative metal designs or pictures. When Garvin broke his leg playing basketball at 14, his family didn't have the money to pay for an operation. His doctor said the only other way it was going to heal properly was if he stayed on crutches for the next three years. "I walked on two of them for a while, then I decided I could make better time on one," he recalled. "I went all over that Fort Griffin country on one crutch, hunting and fishing." Still, it was a handicap for a time, at least when it came to playing sports. A visiting friend brought him a newspaper one day with a contest advertisement inside, asking for who could build the best miniature covered wagon. With nothing better to do, Garvin said he crawled under his dad's farm wagon and proceeded to make the model. He cut the wheel spokes out using a coping saw and made the rest using material from an apple box. A cowboy learned what he was doing and offered to buy it from Garvin, who refused to sell it. But he told the cowboy he would build the man another for $3. When the cowboy returned, he gave the wagon to local rancher Watt Matthews. "Watt took it out to the Lambshead Ranch and put it up over the door. That was 1936 — through the years a lot of people saw that, and I started getting orders for those wagons," Garvin said...more