Fun at work

[wroughtn_harv]

Bill I see two wonderful things happening at this time.

First is the kids are smarter and some are turning to hands on work and my gawd they are good at what they're doing.

Secondly the most important thing to continue a tradition is happening. The older folks are talking about it with respect.

Just think about how many of your motivations and interests come from overhearing your elders talking when you were a kid. They didn't know they were impressing upon you the rules of life but they were.

Everything from hearing the aunts talk about a woman acting cheap and you forming an opinion about cheap acting women to hearing your father and friends talking about so and so and the quality of his work and the work ethic he had.

People are reaching back and treasuring the tangible. Also I'm seeing young people wanting to learn the trades not just as a means of support but because it's an art form and there is so much satisfaction in making things.

I wish I could make more money than I do. But I've resigned myself to just having fun and getting by. One of my friends who is very well off and who just loves to be around me working put me in my place about whining about not getting rich off of my ideas and passions.

He explained to me that it wouldn't be fair for me to have so much fun and make money too.

I suspect he's right. I see him with all the money and in his eyes is true envy of my getting to have fun.

I apologize for coming off as coy. I don't take compliments well, one of my many character flaws. And I do see my good fortune as good luck and less the result of actual effort on my part. When things are viewed from that perspective it's hard to claim or accept credit.

I like to think I was blessed with the best kind of laziness. The kind that knows there has to be an easier way and I've got to find it. I am also most fortunate in having a father who talked about those who worked well with respect. It wasn't until I was almost fifty that one day it hit me that for all these years I'd been working to get my father's respect. And that I'd had it since I was in my twenties. I can't really see how one can claim credit for having such a person for a father or being born lazy. It's almost like someone complimenting you on the look on your face you get when you eat a sundae on a hot day.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

<font color=blue>One request; don't let this love die -- find some youngster with heart and soul and teach him.</font color=blue>

Morning Bill,

I have to share this with you. I've done it a couple of times and then just not posted it. But I'll try again.

It was back in the summer of 93 maybe 94. I was completing some work on the high school ag barn fencing. On a Saturday or Sunday I was working and there about a hundred feet away a family was fixing up the area for their oldest boy's project pig.

But what caught my attention was the youngest boy. He'd scavenged up some sticks and pieces of PVC and was playing with them. The way he was working fascinated me. A little boy wide as he was tall with a creative mind entertaining himself.

So about the time we all took a break I walked over to the family and started up a conversation. Then I pointed to the round boy and told them to cultivate and appreciate his creative mind. He was special and they'd better appreciate him.

Needless to say he was too young to understand anything but someone thinking he was special. His folks are just good people and they hadn't observed his creativity as I had. All they knew was he was a treasure to them.

Over the years I'd see the boy and his brother or his parents and we'd all gladhand as folks do in these parts.

Then last fall I asked the father how the boy was doing. His chest worked at the buttons on his shirt as he explained the kid was the best weldor in high school. I told him to bring the boy by sometime to check out he shop. He did. The boy is no longer as wide as he is tall. The wideness sorta went the way of spinner hubcaps on Mercedes cars.

His eyes were big as saucers as he looked around the shop and I pointed out the different tools and what they could do. And you have to keep in mind our high school has a very well equiped metal shop. They just don't have many one off eccentric made stuff like I do, different suppliers I guess.

Like I said a couple of times in the last days I've written something similar to this and didn't post it.

Yesterday the boy came in looking for work. I wish I could hire him. But he's only sixteen and I'm not sure of just what extra hoops I'd have to jump through to get him on because of his age.

But I did offer the shop to him and any and all help I could offer on any project he wanted to do. And if he'd keep the proper safety equipment on he was more than welcome to come by anytime and observe all he wanted.

We were talking about making things. I pointed to a smoker I've had in the production line for probably five years or more. I asked him if he'd ever made a smoker. I explained that one was stopped because I hadn't taken the time to figure out exactly how I was gonna finish it. I wanted to incorporate a steam line for tenderizing and I didn't want any hot spots. One day it would come clear in my mind and I'd jump on it and get it working.

He then told me he'd never done a smoker cause the way they did them was they all looked alike. And he wanted to have one where the smoke stack was a pair of pipes entertwined around each other cause no one ever did that and he thought it would look kewl.

I looked over at those doors that are breaking my buns and understood two things. One, I knew exactly where he was coming from. Two, if I could spend a year teaching this boy all I know, with his inate talent and nature, he might not need a place to stand on to get leverage to move the world.

Some of the best blacksmiths in this country right now are in their thirties and late twenties. You can go out and look at some of the work being done in some of these big homes and some of the very best are young guys with a passion for the craft.

I don't share your concern about the crafts going away. I see too many young people with the vision I only wish I'd had in my youth. Man I coulda done so much learning!!

 

[blurrybill]

Ah, Harv, you made my day. Thanks for posting the story. I wanted to respond right away, although I don't have time this morning to do justice to the awareness and acceptance you communicated so poetically. I try daily to help patients develop their inherent abilities WITHOUT telling them what to do. I'm very existential and non-directive. I believe that there is a creative/healing ability that all possess, if we allow it to manifest itself. Sometimes I encourage adults who are "stuck" to sit on a park bench and watch children at their "work" - kids experience joy without guile or worry or excessive thought. Any art needs a base, some fundamentals to allow it to flourish -- you obviously saw in that child the abilities emerging. So, after reading a few of your posts, Harv, I think you are an observer of the human condition. My thoughts aren't very coherent this morning, chiefly because I need to do the same in a few minutes. Basically, like you, I'm interested in the meanings people have in their lives; their phenomenological world. Art and craft and music and "being" are all intertwined, are they not? You've "got it" and I'd love to sit in the shade someday and talk about it. Do me a favor and look up a poem by Archibald MacLeish called "Ars Poetica" which I think means "on the nature of poetry." A brief poem, he communicates more than just what poetry is about. Perhaps talking about life, he asserts simply, elegantly at the end: A poem should not mean, but be.

Bill

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Thanks for the poem reference Bill. I've bookmarked it.

I'm usually not into poetry. I guess cause in high school I could skate by in english not by doing my home work or even doing work. I could just throw some words together, suggest it was poetry, and evariably the teach would read into it things I had no earthly idea was even in the state, much less the neighborhood, and gawd knows, not what I meant in the alleged poem. It sorta turned me off on poetry and poets in general if you can understand.

The concept of accepting things for what they are instead of what they should, could, or would be is somewhere I've been evolving towards for some time.

Veddy, veddy, interesting as they say in France just before they mow the lawn.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Here we go hand forming the concept for the vase. It is so neat to take the half inch round stock and using different things there available, like two pieces of inch and a half bar stock stuck in the hardy hole of the vise or one of the receiver holes on one of the tables or just a handy hammer and with the two hands move and shape it.

It never ceases to blow my mind the way it just seems to lead you into manipulating it. It's almost like this straight round rod has wished it's whole life to be bent at this kind of a radius at least once. And you're giving it the opportunity.

There's no guarantee this is the finished product. This is concept time. It's sorta like quality time with your mate, a lot of give and take going on.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This is a shot of the finished top.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Another shot of the top.

I mean does this look like fun or what?

Now I wish like heck I had the talent and time to make each piece of these flowers and such. But what I do is buy them and then heat and pound them a little here and there and then try to find the most unlikely place to put them.

I guess if I wanted to paint a picture with words to describe the pleasure I get from making stuff like this I'd have to study awhile. Then I'd figure out how to tell you'd it's like doing something really great with your tractor. As you're sitting there almost flush with the rush of satisfaction having someone come up and telling you how great an operator you are. And in your own mind you understand that you were only along for the ride.

That ain't bad. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[MDNY]

Harv,

The work you do is "kewl". Really it is. In highschool everyone has to take the required shop courses: Wood working, metal and drafting. I did my time, made my projects, but never really had the passion for it like some others do. Now I went to a rural school that has about 80-90 kids graduate each year. Farming community as most are and the challenges that face kids is great.

I read a year or so ago that our HS Metal shop was entered into the solar powered car challenge again and although I don't recall if where they finished (it was near the top I think) they shocked allot of people. Unfortunately young minds with a good (true) teacher will out due any high funded school kid any day. Why? Because they know what it really is about, making something from nothing and seeing it work.

Your work is one of a kind and I wish our house had a need for it. Maybe someday I will add teh estate gate with electric opener and give you a call. If you deliver to upstate NY that is?

Michael

 

[wroughtn_harv]

To accentuate the patterns in the vase I decided to try to make a chisel and then see what the result would be. It's not really what I had in mind. But you have to learn to crawl before you run.

First picture is heating the steel to be punched in the coal forge.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

This is what it looks like after chiseling.

I think I'm gonna like this. When I learn how to make the chisels then hopefully I'll beable to tool steel like my grandpa could tool leather. Now that would be something.