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TURNING TIMBER TOTEMS WOODEN SCULPTURES

TEXT BY BUD WILKINSON

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOM STORY

A SENTRY STANDS GUARD INSIDE THE GATE

to Ralph Gallagher's house - an Indian dressed in buck-skins, his left hand wrapped around the barrel of a Win-chester Model 1873 rifle that's steadied in an approximation of the parade rest position.

His stern expression never changes, and the rifle never moves as he rigidly keeps watch, despite the noisy sound of a chain saw carving into an aspen log a few yards away and the occasional curious sniffing of one of Gallagher's three sleepy dogs.

Standing on a thick, soft cushion of wood chips under a canopy, Gallagher's at work, expertly wielding one of the five chain saws he uses for his business. "I've raised my kids right here on this place," he says of his home and outdoor shop, tucked up a gully off State Route 60 between MorMorristown and Wickenburg. "We've been here about 35 years."

Turning timber into totems and Indian sculptures - just like the silent outdoor sentry and the cigar store Indians inside - is what Gallagher has done for a living for more than 50 years. "A lot of sawdust has been hauled out of here - and wood carvings," he notes wryly.

The 71-year-old Gallagher learned wood carving from his father, who learned it from his father. "We figure there might have been somebody doing a little whittling back further, but we're not sure about it."

Not surprisingly, his home and shop have the feel of a small lumber mill. A trailer loaded with logs sits on one side of the house, while other logs spread into an alluvial fan on the ground in front of the open woodshed.

The air's filled with the rich, moist smell of freshly cut wood. And wood chips, sawdust, and shavings are everywhere, even on the fluffy golden retriever napping nearby.

Aspen wood from Colorado is the preferred raw material for the creations of Gallagher and his two sons, 32-year-old John and 27-year-old Frank. (Their two sons, 11-year-old Andrew and 13-year-old Anthony, respectively, are already learning the craft.) "The hardest work is getting your logs. It usually is cold and wet and there's snow on the ground," says Gallagher.

"That would be the hardest part, but it isn't tough. It's really kind of nice. We drive 50,000 to 60,000 miles a year getting logs, going back and forth, and delivering." Wood is both harvested from national forest land and purchased from sawmills.

John, who turns out an Indian sculpture roughly every two days, explains, "We've made 'em out of everything. We've made 'em out of pine or cottonwood, but now just about the only thing we use is aspen because it doesn't chip like other wood. The bugs don't seem to like it. It's real soft wood."

It's also lighter, an important factor considering that a five-foot statue can weigh 70 to 80 pounds and a six-footer from 130 to 140 pounds. Promotional literature from R. Gallagher & Sons explains that such "wood carvings were first created after Native Americans introduced English settlers to tobacco in Virginia during the 1600s. Later, merchants put the sculptures outside their stores to show customers that they sold tobacco products."

John first picked up a wood chisel nearly 400 years later when he was four years old. "People ask me how long I've been doing it, and I'll tell 'em, 'Since I was 18,' because a lot of people don't believe I've been doing it that long. That's easiest sometimes."

The Indian sculptures provide the bread and butter of the business, Frank says, noting that brother John is "the most versatile carver" in the family. Not only does John do Indians, he also sculpts caricatures of lawyers, dentists, police officers, and judges complete with powdered wigs as well as snakes, pigs, chickens, giraffes, and Gila monsters. He also did a life-size Ronald McDonald for the McDonald's restaurant in Wickenburg.

Who buys the finished pieces? "No typical buyer. We sell a lot of ours to repeat customers who come back again and again," says the family's patriarch. "For the larger pieces we get $500. The stores, they all double [the price] when they get 'em." Among the buyers are movie actors Daniel Stern and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, Gallagher reports, "likes big ones seven feet tall."

For the Gallagher family, it's a pressure-free existence. "None at all. I've been at it 51 years, and I've never got rich, if anyone wants to know," he reports, laughing at the thought. Or perhaps at the thought of others trying his profession because, "It takes about 10 or 15 years for a man to be able to make a living at wood carving."

The term "wood carving" doesn't adequately describe the process, either. After the figures are roughed out with a chain saw and detailed with hand tools, they must be painted. That responsibility goes to Ralph's wife, Mary.

Gallagher keeps her busy, and vice-versa. "I've got a bad case of 'no work, no eat.' And Mary says if you want that steak in the evening, you've got to get out and hustle."

Consequently, Gallagher does about 300 pieces a year for sales in this country and Europe, adapting each piece of wood. "You just got to adjust to that, make it a little different or a little smaller, or tough it out over those bad places in the wood like the knots and crooked grains. Nothing's perfect. It just takes a little longer when you get a bad log."

Gallagher also must somewhat sublimate the urge to be freely creative. "There are a lot of things I'd like to do, but I have to stick with what sells and what I have orders for. Yeah, every once in a while I'll make a carousel horse, a carousel pig once in a while, a little cowboy."

Gallagher and his sons, who are just as prolific and talented, may never get rich, but they'll never fall victim to job stress, either. "This is a nice, gentle way to make a living," Ralph Gallagher confides. "Nobody hates the wood-carver."