Bucks
Steve Ripper
Dear Friends,
Good morning. When you meet Steve Ripper, you immediately realize that he works with wood. Sawdust flakes his graying hair and clothes. Ripper has been the proprietor of the Haycock Village Woodworks near Applebachsville for 35 years. His shop and home occupy what was once the Haycock one-room school.
He’s also an activist. Ripper has served Haycock Township on its Planning Commission and Zoning Board for a combined total of 22 years. I think that he could be convinced to volunteer for Haycock again. Personally, he’d make an excellent supervisor but we’ll have to stay tuned to see if the township bug will bite.
Before we got to chatting about his woodworking, I noticed that there were pigeons housed in a screened pen above his barn. “They’re racing pigeons,” Ripper explained. I knew of them as homing pigeons. “I’ve been raising and racing pigeons since I was eight.” He said. “I used to have 100 but I only have a few now. I stopped racing them five years ago.”
Ripper told me that he’d enter 100 to 600 mile races. Competitors would take their birds to a designated spot and release them. The bird that flew to home base in the shortest elapsed time won. Today, he judges fancy pigeons and breeds them.
“I’ve always been involved with nature,” Ripper continued. “Anything that flew, hopped, swam or jumped…anything that crossed my path, I’d try to raise and propagate it.” He showed me a picture of him as a kid when the Philadelphia Children’s Zoo opened. “I donated a bunch of animals,” he laughed.
Ripper draws and sketches. He won his associate bachelor’s degree from the Bucks County Community College. “The art classes rekindled my love for them,” Ripper told me. He received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He worked three jobs simultaneously to get through college, and specialized in three-dimensional art, like: glass blowing, ceramics, and furniture design and construction.
Ripper taught at Bucks for ten years before starting his business. At Bucks, he revamped the ceramics department, created a glass blowing studio and began work on the woodworking department. His starting salary was only $7,100.
Ripper’s expertise varies from designing and building custom furniture, to restoration, to architectural millwork. As a youngster, he learned about contracting from his father. At 16, Ripper apprenticed with German and Italian carpenters.
Today, he’s constantly busy doing high-end residential restoration and construction. Ripper works as a consultant and depends upon word of mouth for introductions. “I don’t even have a business card,” he laughed.
Ripper always has an eye for trees, nature and animals. He’s very involved with the Lehigh Valley Bonsai Society and horticulture. He told me that in the Philadelphia region, there is a plethora of garden clubs. Ripper would like to see them choose a common site so members could interface with each other. I think I’ll have a chat with Paul Meyer, the Director of the Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill. The arboretum would be a perfect headquarters for all of them.
It’s obvious that the environment is his first passion. “Air and water quality depend upon healthy woodlands,” Ripper began. He worries that lawn chemicals are leeching into the creeks, which feed the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. “It’s so important to promote ecology,” he says.
“We need to use ecology in our zoning laws in order to properly control development,” Ripper added. “We need to create ecological zones paid by a combination of government and business working together…we need more public gardens.”
Ripper believes that America is drifting away from its agricultural roots. “After World War II, a typical American desired a comfortable house with a television set and a car,” he told me. “Today we’re building 7,000 square foot McMansions. How much energy does it take to heat and air condition these homes? It will take more black outs and brown outs to wake us up.
“We need a new breed of politicians,” Ripper concluded, “people who’ll work for the public, rather than for their own good.” (Bravo, Steve Ripper!)
He thinks that technology has taught us to adopt a throw away lifestyle. Ripper would have us all consider the philosophy of the ancient American Indian, which taught us that life is a circle. “We must leave something for the next generation,” Ripper says. “We need to look at things differently.”
As I left his shop, I noticed
feathery bamboo billowing in the strong March wind. Ripper had planted the
bamboo so that migrant birds could find shelter. He’s worth a visit or a call-
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith