May. 22, 2004 - 19:06 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Handwork

After a few slashes, gashes and bloody things I finally reached the stage where my parents felt that I could be trusted alone with a jack knife. Then the way for me to carve the world was suddenly open to my beady eyes and ambitions. Of course the only things I lacked were eye-hand coordination and a shortage of know how. Frustration and wood chips, sweat and failure met head on.

Castles In The Air and the ability to whittle all the neat things I wanted to do eluded me. Didn't stop me from trying though.

I did gain an inch or two and managed to rough cut a solid boat, makes me laugh though, the deck was always slanted to one side or the other, bow to stern to high or low to the side -- any combination of those fit the bill on my trials. I did manage to whittle toy guns which required a great amount of my imagination, both in the carving and using of same, anyway my BANG was pretty good.

A lot of my hopeful projects were abandoned due to mistakes or the final realization that it was far above my capability.

Along the way I mastered pounding of nails without bending them over as well as making a straight cut with a saw, the cut didn't always go the direction I wished though. Driving screws is something I worked on too.

Still I kept trying to whittle something that resembled anything. A succession of cut fingers and splinters were on that time line too, by then I could bandage a cut finger myself. I got to the point of being able to carve out a solid ?boat? , now and then.

My whittling penchant reached its peak when I whittled out a small boat and succesfully hollowed it out, put a tiny mast in and happily saw it float on an even keel. A trip or two in mountain creeks I enjoyed until it finally floated away beyond my reach, so I bid it a sad goodbye, knowing that the little craft was seaworthy.

I guess that my carving days finished when I made a couple of block prints from linoleum glued to thick plywood. They are still around somewhere in the family.

Then it was off to bigger and more complicated things which of course had a longer learning curve.

When we go on a picnic in the hills I still carry a jack knife and sit around the campfire whittling mindlessly, in imitation of the old folks of my youth, there is something that satisfies in that act.

Although I gained other skills along the way, much of my work was Handwork . . . . . . . . .

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