An oak box with wire nuts and drywall screws in it.

30 May 2023, 09:30 PM

Steve Miller

Scott Pfyl, my friend of some 45 years, died this morning. He was 72 and in perfect health until yesterday when he had a stroke and this morning when he died. In fact we texted back and forth for several hours Sunday night and there was no indication that there was anything wrong. Same goofy stuff we always talked about.

Goofy would be a good way to describe Scott. Quirky might be a better description - he had interesting views on any number of subjects and I could never really tell if he was serious or not. When he was serious about something (woodworking, his family, his work) he was deadly serious but other than that he let his imagination run wild.

Woodworking was his passion and he was insanely good at it. Beautiful work - fine joinery and inlays, but also crazy things like the guitar he made out of a metal Danish cookie box that actually played - that one had a snakeskin covering up the cord and Vegas poker chips for tuning pegs. He was working on a set of 6 mandolins, each made from a different wood, when he died. I wonder if they’ll ever be finished.

I hooked up a saw for him once and he gave me an oak box he had made. It’s beautifully constructed, but what he filled it with is what makes it so special to me. He put in some wire nuts, some drywall screws, a few bolts, a scrap of wire. There are some random baseball cards - God knows why - a piece of coral and another piece of petrified wood. Polished rocks, paper clips, a WW2 pinup card, a Crackerjack prize still sealed in the paper envelope and a postcard showing the Parthenon. All a bit crazy and all very Scott.

I’m gonna miss that guy.