After living across the alley from the Frank Pengal family since 1958, you’d think you would know a lot about your neighbors, but it was only in the past couple of weeks I discovered that Frank has been and still is a wood carver, and a very good one, for the past 20 years. It was not a little bird who told me, but another neighbor, Denece Socknat, who clued me in. And, so a story was born!<BR><BR>Frank, a very quiet, modest, unassuming individual is the main reason I didn’t know anything about his talent. He doesn’t brag about his work, and he didn’t learn his craft at Reserve Mining Co. where he worked in plant protection for 30 years. <BR><BR>When I asked where he learned to carve, he responded, “I liked to work with wood, so I bought some books on the subject and learned to carve.” (I don’t know of very many people who could read a book, then carve a bird, a figure or a canoe.) He discovered that he enjoyed carving so much, he just kept doing it.