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The Easy-Bleeders Club meets every Tuesday night at the home of Sue and Jim Sebby in our small Iowa village to offer support, comfort and assistance to one another.
No need to drag out the medical dictionary and research haemophilia. The Easy-Bleeders don't have that disease, but they do have an addiction. These folks are addicted to wood carving, and the club's name refers to the occasional slip of their razor-sharp knives.
About a dozen area residents gather around a table in Sebby's garage and work on pieces which range from airplanes to reindeer to chains carved from a single block of wood. The free-flowing banter is as diverse as the carvings, but silence occasionally reigns for long periods.
And there is always humor.
The group happily points out the time Carolyn Drennan carved a policeman with six fingers on one hand.
"I performed an amputation," Drennan said.
"I came here to learn to carve," Merle Anderson said. "And I learned a lot of new jokes."
It's an informal group with no officers, no dues and no rules. It was formed 15 years ago by the late Merlyn Irwin, Doc Walker and Karl Birch.
"Doc brought me a piece of walnut and I carved him a shoe," Irwin said. "That's how it got started."
Why a shoe?
"Because that's what I saw in the wood," said Irwin, who was 84 at this writing, but has since died.
Sue Sebby is not a carver, but serves treats to the group each week. She got the biggest laugh of the evening with a lightning-fast answer to a visitor's question about what was the most unusual carving the group had ever done.
"Do you mean something that you could recognize," she said.
The joy of creating, therapy and companionship were reasons given for carving.
"Four hours of good carving seems like fifteen minutes,"
Irwin said. "It's an addiction."
Dick Hildreth started with a piece of balsa wood two inches square and four feet long, and finished with a six foot unbroken chain. Each time he freed a link from the wood, he gained an inch, he explained.
"It's great therapy," Walker said. One of his horse carvings was donated to the Rockwell City Rotary Club auction. It brought $125, which went to the library fund.
The group's name is not entirely a joke. Small cuts are not unusual, and Drennan received a purple heart award during a seminar at Audubon recently. At a different seminar a man nicked an artery and made a trip to the hospital. That's rare, however, Jim Sebby said.
One member is Joyce Carver. "I went to a wood carver's meeting recently and I was recognized as the only REAL Carver there," she said.
"My wife says we are improving," Sebby said. "Our pile of wood chips is getting bigger."
Marty RicKard Bio
Marty RicKard attended William Penn College , Iowa State University and University of Southern Mississippi , from which he holds a BS degree in journalism and photojournalism. He also has a Masters Degree in photography, in addition to the Craftsman, CPP, and A-ASP degrees. Marty spent two years as a technical writer for White Motor Company, and has worked for the Charles City Press, Mason City Globe-Gazette, and Davenport Times-Democrat. He was co-owner of the weekly New Sharon Star, where he was twice named Iowa Master Columnist for his article, which was syndicated in twenty Iowa newspapers. For more than a decade Marty's regular column appeared in the Professional Photographer magazine. He has been published in many other magazines and newspapers, including Writer's Digest, Writer Advice, Golf Digest, Resource Magazine, Picture, Range Finder, and Darkroom. In addition to his writing credits, Marty has won numerous photography awards, has lectured in 48 states, and has traveled internationally as lecturer, and judge. He was one of thirty from the U.S. to participate in the first cultural exchange with China in 1986. He currently is a regular columnist for Lens Magazine, and a full-time writer of fiction and poetry. He is the author of two poetry books and one volume of short stories. He is an entertaining speaker.
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