Feb. 05, 2004 - 17:31 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Out Of It

I guess that one of the things that sticks now in my memory is that of Mom kneading dough, cooking on the coal range and the results of both. I was interested and Mom made it, it was good.

As a very young child I was with Mom or with other women so a lot of the stuff I remember was of women's doings. And there were so many times. Watching them pin patterns and then cutting the cloth and running it through the sewing machine was a source of wonder to me. Having that part bolt of flat cloth and making clothing out of it. One time I saw Grandma cutting out a paper pattern, to a size or two smaller. Geez, I never knew you could do that. I thought "Whee, I'll bet I can do that," cutting paper that is.

So that was about the time,"hand work," gained another aficionado and student.

I guess it took a bit of whining but the result was a scissors with a blunt nose, but sharp being presented to me by Grandma. And permission to cut any of the post-read newspapers as long as I put the scraps in the trash. I remember at first the joy of cutting paper, straight cuts, curly cuts and cuts on the diagonal. Then Mom and Grandma supplied me with some simple coloring books and crayons. What a good time that was for me, learning how to color and stay within the lines. After I had that pretty well down, I would cut out the pictures and put them aside.

Then a scrapbook and a bottle of mucilage was given me to put the pictures in the scrapbook. More learning, how to apply mucilage neatly and paste the pictures in the way they should be. After that I was allowed to cut pictures of things out of catalogs and magazines that had been used. I remember being intent on cutting those difficult curves and curlicues and being teased for having my tongue hanging out of the right corner of my mouth. They teased, but it seemed to help me.

My play and also my learning continued, but this go round was watching men working, my Dad, my uncles for example. One of my uncles was a cabinet maker, the other one a construction worker, my Dad at the age of eight was working at an Icebox factory where he learned to work with wood. If there wasn't anything going at home and a house was being built a door or two away from our house I became an enthusiastic audience of one. Watching sawing, planing and chisel work going on kept me wide eyed and thinking, "Some day I'm going to be doing that." The waste products were fascinating too. Curls of wood from the planes, sawdust from the saws, chips from the chisels and scrap wood thrown in a pile which all fit into my play plans and were free. As I grew older and could get around the neighborhood my spectating grew also. I carried scrap wood home, some of which my Dad chopped into kindling after thanking me for bringing it home. And a new thing entered my mind, chopping with an axe. It was quite some time before I was allowed to do that though.

Gradually I was allowed to do some hands on stuff. First it was a couple of four by fours and some nails given to me. Colored fingernails and some hurts occurred during the process of mastering the eye hand coordination of driving nails. The logs were finally as full of nails as they could get.

Then with close supervision I was started on using a handsaw. Soon Dad would draw some lines for me to try to cut to. There was another period of learning to do that. I sawed up all the scraps available. Then a coping saw and some thin plywood appeared and I learned how to use that.

About that time I began to be a helper in the construction of soap box cars. What a melee that was, so many more workers than tools along with conflicting ideas. Back then there were home made scooters being made by us kids. I made mine on my own. It took a two-by-four, a roller skate - front wheels and back ones, nailed fore and aft on the two-by-four, an apple box nailed to the two-by-four and a one-by-one nailed on to the top of the apple box. I managed to drill pilot holes for screws to mount the halved roller skate securely, using what I had learned from my uncle and a Yankee push drill. I ended up with a pretty neat product which I later traded to another boy.

Somewhere in there came my desire to learn to wash dishes. Mainly I guess it was because water was involved. I learned to do dishes, got the job I didn't apply for and began to hate that process exceedingly. But, I held the position until I went to work.

Anyway what little expertise I had mastered was well used in cobbling together the things we gathered from trash cans and converted into toys of our imagination. Rubber guns were made by the scores, some simple some not so simple. I remember one that an older brother or Dad or uncle made, it was a machine gun type of thing, with a notch on the pointing end the other end of the contrivance was a wheel with nails around the circumference, each to hold one rubber band and a detent governed by the trigger that would let the rubber bands be released one at a time. 'Twas an object of great admiration amongst us.

I took an old alarm clock apart and made a mess. Finally took one apart and reassembled it correctly. So began my interest in things mechanical.

I think all those things were part of my pre-job training because I rember one thing or another coming to my mind when something new came up on my jobs. Although I did a lot of desk work, etc. My love was the material and tools to make something Out Of It . . . . . . . . . . .

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