Ellendale man puts skills of a lifetime to good use

In the St. Louis Ellendale neighborhood, on the edge of Maplewood’s Greenwood neighborhood, are artists, musicians — creative types — Gary Tash is definitely one of them. Actually, it wouldn’t be a stretch to call him a Missouri Renaissance man.

Tash bought an old storefront on Commonwealth Avenue and rehabbed it so his wife would have a place for her grand piano — their house nearby is too small. The piano is upstairs; the ground floor is his wood working shop.

His small garden on the side the house was shaded by an old Sears kit home, so he bought it and tore it down — for more sun and also to use the lot for more planting.

He said some neighbors were offended that he demolished the house.

“The outside looked far better than it was on the inside,” he said. “All the systems were out, the foundation could be taken apart with your hand, with thousands of roots riddling it. It was really a shotgun house.”

The resulting plot turned out to be more work than he bargained for. Tash said he wanted to show what could be done with a relatively small piece of ground. He’s planted fruit trees, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, a vegetable plot and native Missouri plants.

“The soil has been terrible,” he said. “The clay is like concrete under there. I put in 27 cubic yards of topsoil, 60 cubic yards of compost, and it’s been a real workout.” He did it all by hand.

He said in his retirement years it’s a wonderful thing to resort to — “not just be sitting in a chair somewhere.”

It’s hard to image Tash just sitting in a chair. He’s acquired several skills in his lifetime, and put them to good use. He grew up in Dogtown, and went with his mother to a store with Stanley tools in the back.

“They all had instruction guides, so I started reading those,” he said. “So then I had a pretty good feel for tools, and I asked my mom to buy me a chisel for Christmas. I said next Christmas, a plane. So I started from that.”

Tash’s dad’s side were all Jewish, from eastern Europe. His mom’s side were from the Ozarks and survived the Depression doing things like gardening and making do.

“They used to talk about it a lot,” he said. “They all canned. Nothing was put to waste. If you had a shoe you cut it up and used the leather for hinges. If you broke a glass you saved it to shape an ax handle.”

He learned a lot by hanging out around his local hardware store — now it’s Scheidt True Value.

“I’d ask about something,” he said. “‘What do you do if you want to put this or that together?’ and there were guys there that would tell you, and if they didn’t know, you go to the lumber yard and say, ‘Hey I’m trying to put in a concrete curb, how do I get formed up for that?’ and there would be a contractor there who would say, ‘hey buddy, this is how you do that.’”

“So it just kind of evolved,” he said. “It worked out I was able to work my way through college and grad school doing a lot of that stuff.” He said his family was not very well off. His father had a heart problem, so Tash did a lot of what needed to be done in the home.

He said he went through a religious period, and went to a summer camp called Arcadia Valley Bible Camp, near the Lake Killarney dam.

“I was fascinated by the idea of being in a camp setting on a river,” Tash said. “I volunteered when I was in the 7th or 8th grade to go down and help them. I realized right away I didn’t know much about anything, even though I thought I knew everything before I went there.

“We ended up building roads and bridges, all the plumbing. The cabins were all native stone. I learned about stone work. I learned about framing, fixing roofs. They needed electric, so I learned about electricity,” he said.

Tash said if something doesn’t grow on his lot next year he may sell it.

“The last three years have been terrible growing seasons, and if the climate change keeps up the way it is, it’s going to be a real boondoggle,” he said. “I don’t want to keep the land if it’s not going to produce.”

Which is understandable — he’s a productive guy.