"Sir, the 'tree' is the wooden frame on which a saddler works to create and fashion a finished piece of equipment. Worked leather is stretched over the tree to create the seat, cantle, and pommel. Straps are attached and rings and fittings are secured and so on."
"I see," was my response to his attempt to educate me.
"Cyrus had huge hands, and even today I don't know how he was able to work the wood so finely, given their size. But he had the combination of strength and fine touch and could conjure a perfect tree piece for Mr. Robert and Mr. William. They worked the leather and made a simple thing beautiful. I've been in dozens of saddleries since those days. After I went on to politics, I'd visit most every saddler in my district. I went into Nashville and Washington shops, too, and Richmond, as well. All the shapers in those establishments worked on tables, sometimes standing and sometimes sitting on tall stools. Their tools would be laid out along their work table. Cyrus was different in the shop and outside of it."
"He didn't work at a table but rather on a stool. He sat on it and worked the wood in his lap covered with a heavy leather apron. On each side of his stool were short shelved cases containing the variety of tools he used. As he worked, the shavings made an increasingly higher mound. His carving corner with the abundance of pine shavings was the sweetest smelling place in the shop. Boiling hides are quite an olfactory affront. They put up a terrible odor. Only at the end of the whole long process does the good smell of leather come about."
The daylight's brightness was lessening towards the east, the western sky holding on for a grand exit. The day's beauty was nearing that gentle and powerful transformation into night's magic. Swipes of orange against pale blue near the horizon with deep blue at the heaven's apex offered a magnificent prelude to the closing of the day.
When I returned my attention to Mr. Jones after noting the passage of time, he was saying, "Cyrus became my mentor and life long friend. He was a slave, but the Dicksons appreciated his skill and he was not troublesome as long as left alone to do his craft. He taught me the meaning of 'rectitude' in its truest sense. When he was a grown man, in his forties I guess, with a wife and growing family, and I was sixteen, he called me 'Wash,' not Master Jones or George. 'Wash' I was to him in the years we worked side by side. Then, when I became a man and I supposed he judged me as a somebody, I became 'Mr. Wash' to him.