Worden ? There was a day, not long ago, when Dave Anderson would have been up on the lift himself.

That was back before that black quarter horse went berserk.

Ever since then, Anderson is just too shaky to be 15 feet off the ground, lifting heavy objects. So he’s resigned to watching this tedious process from afar.

His masterwork to this point – a round stained-glass window measuring 5 feet in diameter – is being mounted at Worden United Methodist Church, and he knows it wouldn’t take much to bust out one of the 283 segments of colored glass.

He’s one of more than a dozen spectators from the Taul family in the sanctuary of the new church. Four brothers and sisters of the family commissioned the piece to memorialize their parents, Hibbard and Marie Taul.

As the Taul family is looking back, Anderson is looking forward.

Two years removed from a horseback-riding accident that nearly killed him, Anderson sees this memorial piece as a new beginning. At 65 years old, he’s turning a hobby into a second career by opening a stained-glass studio.

And he’s doing it all from a Douglas County landmark that needed a new beginning of its own.

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The Globe Store, located six miles west of Baldwin Junction on U.S. Highway 56, started in the 1930s as a post office and general store. It’s also been an antique shop, furniture store, beauty salon, abandoned building and, for a brief time in the ’90s, a meth lab.

Fishermen stopped there on the way to Lone Star Lake for ice and bait. Locals knew they could meet up in the parking lot to chat. Gossip about the unincorporated town of Globe – which is now more like a series of dispersed farmhouses – used to flow freely around the store’s horseshoe pit.

Anderson remembers those days. As a child, his parents would stop at the Globe Store on their way from his hometown of Ottawa to show cows at the Overbrook fair.

“I’ve known about this building since I was a little kid,” he says. “I never thought I’d own it.”

Roger Taul, who grew up two miles east of the store, remembers going there as a child in the ’50s and drinking Cokes on the front porch.

“We used to come down here and there would be bicycles and horses all around,” he recalls.

But by the late ’90s, after all the reincarnations, the building’s heyday was over. It began to fall into disrepair.

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Anderson is told he helped pack up the contents of the business he poured his life into for 15 years.

It was Anderson Interiors, at Sixth and Kasold in Lawrence.

He doesn’t remember doing that. He doesn’t remember six months before or six months after that horse reared back, tipped over and pinned him against the gravel road.

That was April 25, 2004. Anderson was riding his daughter’s horse with a friend, Toni Kalousek, near Lecompton.

“She just popped a cork and exploded,” Kalousek says. She was holding the horse’s reins at the time, and the fit was violent enough it threw her 115-pound frame to the ground, breaking two ribs.

Anderson spent a week at the Kansas University Medical Center, then rehabbed with relatives and friends in Kansas City and Wichita.

Over time, his memory started to return, and he was a little surer on his feet.

Eventually, he was looking to return to his old stomping grounds in northeast Kansas. That’s when a friend mentioned, in jest, that the old Globe Store was for sale.

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When Anderson closed on the Globe Store, the pumps out front said you could buy a gallon of unleaded for $1.15.

He tore those out. You don’t need them for a stained-glass art studio.

He’s done a lot of work to the stone building – trading a door for a window, replacing another door with a window, cleaning up the interior and tearing out loading docks where delivery men used to drop off meat, cheese, overalls, ice and anything else customers might want to buy.

He’s refurbished both the shop in the front of the store and the living quarters in back, where he resides with his cat, Squeaker.

“The only luxury I have left in my life is time, and I’ve never had that before,” he says. “Now, the only thing I have to worry about is me.”

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Anderson has taken a few classes in stained-glass work, but he basically taught himself how to do it about 20 years ago.

He’s always been a carpenter, and he figures the art of fitting pieces of colored glass together is just a natural extension of that.

The process is fairly simple: Draw a pattern, select the color and texture of glass, cut the glass, and solder the spaces between the pieces.

But the detail is incredible. The glass must be cut to within 1/16-inch accuracy to work, and it’s easy for a newcomer to shatter a piece while cutting it.

“The glass has to be cut so perfect,” Anderson says. “It’s sometimes slow, and sometimes tedious, yet to me it’s easy.”

Randy Rayer knows how tedious the work can be. He’s one of the best-known stained-glass artists in the Midwest, owns Rayer Stained Glass Supply in Wichita and has become both a supplier and a friend to Anderson.

“I think David’s got a good heart, and a good spirit,” Rayer says. “This is going to give him a new spark on life. David needs something like that. If you don’t, what are you going to do? Sit in some rocking chair?”

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Before the 5-foot memorial piece for the Taul family, Anderson had done only a few commissioned stained-glass pieces. Mostly, it had been a hobby and a way to make gifts for friends and family.

These days, he still can’t remember a year of his life, has trouble recalling names and is a bit tipsy on his feet. But in small doses, he can work on stained glass projects.

“I’m very fortunate,” he says. “This is something I can do, I’m good at, like to do and this building was available.

“I need something to do, since I’m here by myself. Since I live here, I can work two or three hours and sit down and have a drink or whatever. I can do it all at my own pace and subsidize my retirement.”

The Taul family, who serendipitously wandered into the Globe Art Glass shop as they were looking to memorialize their parents, found Anderson to be more than a business partner.

“Dave was great,” says Sue Brown, one of Hibbard and Marie Taul’s children. “He was just very much like us, really. That’s why we got along so well. He’s very normal people, down to earth. I don’t know how to explain it other than we found a new friend.”

This is the largest stained-glass work Anderson has done, and it took him six weeks to finish it. It includes a large cross, flowers and a hummingbird (to honor Marie Taul) and rolling farmland (to honor Hibbard).

“The meetings with this family have been a life experience,” Anderson says. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience to meet a family with this much love and trust and camaraderie among the family members.”

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It’s nearing 9 p.m., and Anderson is getting tired. He had planned to go to Wichita the following day to buy glass, but he’s scrapped those plans in favor of resting.

Finally, after more than two hours of work, the Taul memorial glass is in place at the church. After some tense moments, Anderson can laugh with new-found friends.

Then, the lights in the sanctuary are dimmed.

Some day, there will be strategically aimed spotlights backlighting the glass. For now, though, a worker shining a floodlight will have to do.

“It’s just overwhelming,” Anderson says as he gazes at the glass.

Roger Taul, one of the memorialized couple’s children, walks by and gives Anderson a big pat on the shoulder.

“Dave, old buddy, you did a heckuva job,” he says.

“Well,” Anderson responds modestly, “I’m gonna sleep real good tonight.”