Our friend Mark Growden is a storyteller and professional musician from my hometown. Several years ago, he asked us to make him a bag to use during his songwriting workshops that could hold his Sruti Box, a tambourine, and a notepad.
I have been watching 'Ax Men' with my 2 year old, and it conjures layers of memory from childhood in a logging town.
Our childhood hero was Mangin, the bachelor timberfaller across the street. He was home from the woods at about the same time that we were free of school - logger childcare. As kids with the whole afternoon to kill before our folks got home, we would sit in his yard in the shade of a big fir tree and watch Mangin and Kent take off tall boots, sharpen saw chains, drink Mickey's bigmouths, and spin yarns.
Mangin was also a Volkswagen mechanic. He wore the same pair of black Key Jeans every day in the woods, and they could stand up by themselves. His house smelled like fir pitch, sweat, and peanuts. He was half deaf from logging, and spent a lot of money on stereo equipment, on which he played very loud ZZ Top and rock radio. He welded a secret compartment in some bozo's gas tank, and when that guy got popped smuggling a whole bunch of cocaine in from Central America, Mangin had to spend some time in the Federal Pen in the Mojave. My dad the homebrewer put a six pack of beer into root beer bottles that - delivered to Mangin - proved a great hit with the boys down there in Barstow. I was about ten, but I still remember Mangin's going-away party before he went to prison. August in Goodrich Meadows, with kegs of Budweiser cooling in the back of Mangin's Willys pickup under a load of snow from Swain Mountain. Dave Foat roasting a pig over a pit fire.
Kent was killed falling a tree about 10 years ago, and there were a lot of broke-down burly woodsmen in his yard for the wake. A section of the street was flagged off for the overflow crowd using 'KILLER TREE' flagging. The preacher was from the church that Mark's dad helped to start about 30 years ago. When he said that Kent was going to heaven not because of his good deeds but because he the preacher had saved him not 2 months before, a surge of anger flushed through me, and a good part of the crowd too. Kent's good friends from the bar stirred angrily out in the street, and Kenny Bruns grumbled 'Bullshit! He is going there for his good deeds too'.
I have come to realize that we had a lot of male role models, and that we are of a storytelling culture.
My (Zeke) bagmaking has been slowed up by two young boys and starting another business - I've made three bags in the last 10 months.
I took measurements for this bag 16 months ago, and Mark has been very patient. Finally he called a month ago and said gently 'the bag I have been using has completely disintegrated, how's that bag coming?' I needed a prod.
Two or three years later, this one is finally done. Making it brought up a lot of these stories.
Fire hose, cordura scrap, necktie, a classroom map, a jacket lining, surplus webbing, treebark camo pantleg, and some aluminum tubing from the ReStore.
Under the flap is more necktie and map. Mark is a few years older than me and his dad was my track coach/crafts teacher in high school. Mark has been studying music for most of his life with influences all over the world ranging from Ravi Shankar to old slave songs. He came back to town when I was still in high school to regale us with tales of traveling around the West Coast juggling, making music, falling in love, and being offered a blowjob by a strange traveling salesman while hitchhiking across Eastern Washington. He knew how to make weird Vietnamese-shaped hats out of felt, and spent a few weeks telling us stories and teaching us to juggle, playing music, and generally blowing our smalltown minds. Then he was off again.
Old camo as a nod to shared millpond roots. This project brought up memories of growing up in Westwood, and the interweaving of lives there. Of track practice in the gym with 6 feet of snow outside, or running on melting slush through streams of icy runoff; of shooting guns at the sewer ponds with Dean Growden - Mark's brother who is now Lassen County Sheriff.
Or of the 1970s Cutlass that Mark's younger brother - my best friend Jeremy, filled up with gas one day during our senior year and just drove away.
And Mark has always been flamboyant, of course, so I had an excuse to go big with the bag. People in Westwood are still probably talking about the time that they turned on 'Real Sex' on HBO and saw Mark there in some sort of men's tantra workshop circle thingy. My crew boss marking timber for the US Forest Service told me that he had the episode on videotape.
Mark's sister Janay makes amazing clothing, window displays, and anything else. We painted flowers and peace signs on her VW bus before we knew that we weren't really hippies, or that hippies weren't really very cool, and drove it down Highway 32 to Chico to shop for school clothes at Pegasus, wondering why the guys in the big trucks were flipping us off or screaming at us. Janay is a master textile artist who gives me courage to sew in a stream of consciousness way - we share a love of the zigzag.
Time passes, and the meaning of songs change. Mark wrote a song about Westwood years ago that means something to any person who is from there. Trying to reconcile his love of the land with the hardship of the place and its baggage. I used to think that he whined too much about his life, that he was being a drama queen. Later I realized that he was just a few years ahead of me in trying to come to terms with, or express how you identify with (or don't) the important places in your life. As time goes by, I am glad that we have a place that we know is home, and stories to share about it.
Our friend Mike Wofchuck is a professional percussionist. He brought us a Cojongo (wooden box drum) and asked us to make a traveling case for it. This bag is made from a whole bunch of different materials.
Lid in progress - brown hemp from German Army duffel bag, yellow fire hose, scrap leather, grommets in lid/handle are from duffel bag.
Upholstery scrap, fire hose, old cordura from camo duck hunting bag.
Hemp base, army surplus brass D-ring padded with scrap leather to keep lid clips from gouging drum. Fire hose cattails, and Japanese crane motif inkjet printed on raw canvas.
Cattails - Old waxed cotton tarp, fire hose, scrap leather, and ripstop poly/cotton from old cargo pants/uniform at my last job.
Binding the lid with army surplus webbing.
Finished product - front view.
Lid and side - olive strip on the right made from waxed cotton tarps that were the roof of Lauren Kennedy's family cabin for several decades.
My buddy Andrew left a message that there was a big old classroom map laying in his alley. Made of about heavy rubber and about 5'x8' - it is big enough to make a whole series.
This first one is a Christmas present for my pops - who is half Norskie, and half Svede. Fire hose, old leather belt, and map, with inside file-folder pocket from a salvaged carryon bag. Let us know if you want a bag made with a particular geography. Get your continent before it is gone!
Collage and zigzag are two unifying themes for our holiday work this year. Here are some works in progress - including a sneak peek at Erika's new Rockabilly Luggage sets.
Zeke and I recently went on a Wheeled Migration bike tour along the California coast between Montara and Santa Cruz. We had incredible weather and visited organic farms along the way. This is a pic of our bike parking and campground at Pie Ranch, an organic farm that grows ingredients for pies. We had a demo in the morning of how they stone grind their wheat fresh for the pies they make with school children. And then we ate it with pancakes. Yum.
We took our rug rat, Ezra, on the back of Zeke's bike; the little guy loved it.
Ezra was so excited by the new sights, I had to be very creative to get him to eat his meals.
Our last night we camped at Freewheelin' Farm in Santa Cruz. Three farmers run a small farm which delivers it's CSA shares by bicycle. Zeke and I were excited to see they use an attractive blue irrigation hose. When Zeke asked one of the partners, Amy Courtney, if they had any damaged hose, she brought us to a pile of hose bound for the dumpster. Oh lucky day!
Here's Amy on the left, and Lisa, staff of Wheeled Migration, on the right. You can see the farm in the background. Wow, they are right on the ocean and the air was so alive.
Here's a shot of the farmers at work.
When we got home, I laid out the hose on the lawn and washed it with a hose.
This new blue hose felt to me like the perfect weight to make another suitcase. I've been wanting to try a bag big enough to be suitable for a long weekend, for someone that packs a lot of stuff. Here's the "Pablo" overnight bag in progress, named after our friend Pablo, who needs to take several pairs of shoes on every trip.
And here's the finished bag. Freewheelin' hose makes up the sides, along with a fire hose strip (in light blue). Army surplus webbing makes up the handles and strap, and the middle of the bag is a soft, supple piece of scrap leather. Salvaged zippers finish it off. It measures 22" long, 14" wide and 14" tall. It's quite a bit bigger than anything I've made so far, and I think with an adjustment here or there, we've got a great new bag to add to our line. Stay tuned for matching pairs of large and small overnight bags.
I have been wanting to start making luggage for awhile now - finally felt like I was ready to take on a larger bag. During a trip to Portland two weeks ago I went into Oregon Outdoors, and ogled all of their gorgeous Filson bags, thought "we can do that". I found a basic duffel bag at a thrift store a few days ago, and thought that it would be a good shape to copy. I took it apart, made a pattern, and then put it back together, piecing over the existing panels with fire hose.
Here is the finished product, I am stoked on it!
Getting the ends sewn in was a chore - I started off using heavier rubberized hose like I have been using for the messenger bag sides, but with overlapping layers of hose on the sides and 4 layers of trim, the machine was trying to push 5/8", and choking, breaking needles, looping like crazy on the bottom of the fabric. I was up late Googling 'consew 206rb looping', cleaning the machine (filthy), no dice. Once in bed, I realized that I just needed to use thinner material on the ends.
The hardest part was getting the top piece to fit properly, and figuring out the order to sew it in. Ideally the top and ends start as one piece that you sew into the sides, but I decided to sew the bag with seams out, and wasn't sure I trusted the pattern to work out perfectly. I had to do some funky spelunking inside the dark almost-finished bag to do the seam between the ends and sides to finish it. Top is from army surplus German duffel bag, with a new brass zipper from Oregon Leather (another multi-hour destination when we are in Portland). Straps are nylon fire hose salvaged by Dan Borge at the Cal Lodge when they upgraded their fire protection system, and two other kinds of hose.
This is one of the first projects that we have used dyed hose on. The blue is linen fire hose from the Cal Lodge that we dyed during an easter egg hunt party after all of the kids were done making tie-dyes.
Swivel clip from the ReStore - they had a couple bags of brand new solid bronze hardware there last year, thanks boys! Adjuster buckle and D-ring from thrift store belts.
Zeeko Salvage is a collective. We are a married couple living, scrounging and sewing together. Many of our items are co-created; we like making lots of different things - that's why we have a variety of products to offer.
Zeke Lunder started out making farmer's market bags out of chicken feed sacks in 2004. Erika Dietrich Lunder learned to sew and make clothes from her grandmother, and worked as a clothing designer from 2005 to 2007.
Zeeko Salvage formed when we met and began collaborating on a line of purses and totes from feed sacks and mylar-printed Hindu comics. Lately we have been working with fire hose, firefighting surplus, inner tube, and leather, but we'll work with just about anything that can fit thru an industrial sewing machine.
We are a micro-scale DIY industry. The two of us do the sewing, repair our own machines and make as many tools and parts as we can. We sell online, at Chikoko sponsored events in Chico, California, and at the August 'Prepare for the Playa' Street Fair in San Francisco. Feel free to contact us if you have an idea for a custom bag. {Email Us}
