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Allen Sooter built a pirate boat bed for his grandson, Dayton Bennett. It comes with below-deck storage for toys, a clothes chest and room for expansion for when he outgrows the current bed area. Sooter is the owner of Allen’s Carburetor & Electric in Sutherlin.
SUTHERLIN — Aargh! If only Dayton Bennett’s grandpappy, Allen Sooter, could dig a bay, so his grandson might float his boat upon where his head now lay.
After all, this 2-1/2-year-old’s landlubber ways are over, now that he sleeps in a pirate boat-bed in his Rhododendron home near Mount Hood.
On Friday, Sooter delivered to his grandson a hand-built bed that’s worthy enough for the seven seas — or Zs, whichever his mother might prefer — as long as his interest in it takes a decade to wane.
“Hopefully, until he’s about 14, because that thing took a long time,” said Sooter’s daughter, Tabatha Bennett, 23, a Sutherlin High School graduate who owns a condominium-cleaning business at Mount Hood.
The time and creativity her father put into the bed was beyond Bennett’s expectations when she called him September 2006 to ask him if he would build Dayton a car-bed.
Anyone who knows Sooter knows that he loves to work with wood. Inside his Sutherlin shop, Allen’s Carburetor & Electric, hangs about 35 wooden model airplanes that he built by hand that span the evolution of aviation style, from World War I to present day. But the thought of building a car-bed left him uninspired.
“Yeah, everybody’s got a car-bed,” Sooter responded, before suggesting that they look in a Better Homes & Garden book for a better idea.
But Bennett didn’t find anything she liked. And knowing that her father has been renovating a 50-foot yacht for the past five years, she asked him if he could build something along those lines. So Sooter sketched a pirate boat/bed.
Bennett loved it.
“I said, ‘Hell, I can draw it, but I don’t know if I can make it or not,’” said the 52-year-old, self-described “old pirate.”
He went to work on it anyway. Two hundred hours later — with about a 3-month hiatus because of cold weather — a pirate boat/bed was born of Sooter’s labor. Recently he finished painting it, after Bennett’s visit three weeks ago, and she was “ecstatic” when she saw the bed.
“The man is extremely talented,” Bennett said last week.
“Dream Boat,” however, didn’t go to Rhododendron with every accessory Sooter designed. Missing was the crow’s nest, because Bennett didn’t want her son climbing the mast; the live-action cannons, which could spring-launch items with the pull of a string; or the trap-door, where Dayton could stuff his 6-month-old sister under the captain’s quarters.
“That didn’t sound like such a hot idea,” Bennett said.
But Sooter did manage to hang a bell from the rear deck, which will hover above Dayton’s head where he will sleep. He calls it “Grandpa’s Revenge,” and hopes the boy will ring it to his heart’s content.
To shape the wooden bow, Sooter used steam and a lot of clamps.
He placed small wooden labels on each feature of the bed so Dayton will eventually learn their names.
The boat itself is 28 inches from the hull bottom to deck. The captain’s quarters, which also functions as a chest of drawers in the back, is removable for the boat’s easy transport through standard doors — on its side — and to provide additional leg room when Dayton outgrows the five feet of space now allotted.
There’s a main mast and a mizzen mast, with five sails and a skull-and-crossbones flag flying between each. And at the bowsprit is a hand-carved wooden dolphin, smiling underneath.
Sooter said he’s now committed to building a castle-bed for his granddaughter, which he envisions having two towers and a drawbridge. Additional features could come in design.
“It happens,” he said.
And Sooter’s got bigger dreams. For the past five years he’s been planning to sail his yacht in the South Seas as part of a 5- or 6-boat armada, something he’ll do with friends for five, maybe seven years before he permanently regains his “land legs” again.
“I’ll always be the grandpa that sailed away and came back with stories to tell,” he said.
• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.
After all, this 2-1/2-year-old’s landlubber ways are over, now that he sleeps in a pirate boat-bed in his Rhododendron home near Mount Hood.
On Friday, Sooter delivered to his grandson a hand-built bed that’s worthy enough for the seven seas — or Zs, whichever his mother might prefer — as long as his interest in it takes a decade to wane.
“Hopefully, until he’s about 14, because that thing took a long time,” said Sooter’s daughter, Tabatha Bennett, 23, a Sutherlin High School graduate who owns a condominium-cleaning business at Mount Hood.
The time and creativity her father put into the bed was beyond Bennett’s expectations when she called him September 2006 to ask him if he would build Dayton a car-bed.
Anyone who knows Sooter knows that he loves to work with wood. Inside his Sutherlin shop, Allen’s Carburetor & Electric, hangs about 35 wooden model airplanes that he built by hand that span the evolution of aviation style, from World War I to present day. But the thought of building a car-bed left him uninspired.
“Yeah, everybody’s got a car-bed,” Sooter responded, before suggesting that they look in a Better Homes & Garden book for a better idea.
But Bennett didn’t find anything she liked. And knowing that her father has been renovating a 50-foot yacht for the past five years, she asked him if he could build something along those lines. So Sooter sketched a pirate boat/bed.
Bennett loved it.
“I said, ‘Hell, I can draw it, but I don’t know if I can make it or not,’” said the 52-year-old, self-described “old pirate.”
He went to work on it anyway. Two hundred hours later — with about a 3-month hiatus because of cold weather — a pirate boat/bed was born of Sooter’s labor. Recently he finished painting it, after Bennett’s visit three weeks ago, and she was “ecstatic” when she saw the bed.
“The man is extremely talented,” Bennett said last week.
“Dream Boat,” however, didn’t go to Rhododendron with every accessory Sooter designed. Missing was the crow’s nest, because Bennett didn’t want her son climbing the mast; the live-action cannons, which could spring-launch items with the pull of a string; or the trap-door, where Dayton could stuff his 6-month-old sister under the captain’s quarters.
“That didn’t sound like such a hot idea,” Bennett said.
But Sooter did manage to hang a bell from the rear deck, which will hover above Dayton’s head where he will sleep. He calls it “Grandpa’s Revenge,” and hopes the boy will ring it to his heart’s content.
To shape the wooden bow, Sooter used steam and a lot of clamps.
He placed small wooden labels on each feature of the bed so Dayton will eventually learn their names.
The boat itself is 28 inches from the hull bottom to deck. The captain’s quarters, which also functions as a chest of drawers in the back, is removable for the boat’s easy transport through standard doors — on its side — and to provide additional leg room when Dayton outgrows the five feet of space now allotted.
There’s a main mast and a mizzen mast, with five sails and a skull-and-crossbones flag flying between each. And at the bowsprit is a hand-carved wooden dolphin, smiling underneath.
Sooter said he’s now committed to building a castle-bed for his granddaughter, which he envisions having two towers and a drawbridge. Additional features could come in design.
“It happens,” he said.
And Sooter’s got bigger dreams. For the past five years he’s been planning to sail his yacht in the South Seas as part of a 5- or 6-boat armada, something he’ll do with friends for five, maybe seven years before he permanently regains his “land legs” again.
“I’ll always be the grandpa that sailed away and came back with stories to tell,” he said.
• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.
