Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
I took my first shop class in the 7th Grade. The teacher was a short Austrian with a missing finger on his left hand and an accent that struck fear in the heart of a thirteen year old. On the first day of class he walked us around the meticulously kept room naming each machine and giving a brief description of its use while we followed dutifully in a tight knot of boys dressed in dungarees and T-shirts.
When he came to the joiner he told us about the importance of being aware of our surroundings, of paying attention to what we were doing at all times and then he described how he had once stood fascinated by the shavings that came out of that machine one day a long time ago and how for just a second he forgot what he was doing until he saw the bright red spray of his own blood stain the pile of sawdust at his feet and looked at his missing digit in horror. He held his stump up in front of our faces and said the phrase I have never forgotten, “This is what you get for inky-dinkying around.”
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Over the course of that year I found myself living in a perpetual state of fear of both the power tools and Mr. Franz. He demanded exactitude in everything we did, from the care for each chisel and screwdriver that hung in the well tended cabinet to the way we swept the floor at the end of every class. I learned a great deal as well, little details that have stuck with me for over forty years and what I made in that shop, a cutting board, a candlestick, a chessboard and a side table are still in use in the home of my Father, solid, well made and a reminder of what I learned. Back then I recall that my shop teacher was often demanding, occasionally cruel by the standards of today.
If you chatted it up and lost your focus he would come up behind you and grab a handful of your hair and lift you up from your stool by the scalp. He taught us the difference between pine and poplar, showed us the best way to get an edge on a blade, how to bring out the grain of the wood when we finished a piece and how to care for the things you were responsible for no matter how insignificant they might seem. His scowl was a constant, but the beautifully crafted pieces of furniture built by the Seniors that decorated the hallways of our school were reminders of something better that he gave us.
We talked among ourselves outside of class, rumors of his life in Austria during the war, the reasons behind his demanding manner and his constant press to do more no matter how much we did in the hour we spent in that room, unventilated and filled with floating motes of dust. I hated that year but I loved it too and it has taken me my entire adult lifetime to realize that aside from the men in my own family, no one has had a bigger impact on my life than Andrew Franz.
A couple of weeks ago the interns arrived on our farm. I give all credit to our son for setting it up- these were his friends he met while he was out in America doing his thing, nice young men that are often dismissed as an entire generation, but who are set quite apart from the depictions you often see. They don’t sip pumpkin lattes and snack on Banh Mi, don’t wear toreador pants and ballet slippers and never seem to be on a hand held device. Their taste in music is sketchy to my ears, but they have a manner and an ethic that sets them apart from most men I encounter in the broader world. There is an optimism that came with them when they arrived and a joy that seems to follow no matter how difficult the task at hand.
I briefed them on what we expected, honesty foremost, but respect for what they were going to do. I didn’t care how long any task took as long as it was done to the best of their ability. In exchange for their work they would be fed well, allowed free use of the farm and anything on it, freedom to explore and recreate on their off hours and days and a respect for their privacy. They’d accumulate the credits they needed towards graduation as interns and we’d benefit from the pure physical labor that comes from four twenty-somethings interested in a future in agriculture.
I promised to show them what I had learned and that we’d work together and though I am not a teacher by any means, I was determined to give them the benefit of my knowledge if they would give us their time. My only other demand was that they would submit a weekly submission in whatever format they chose that chronicled the work of the week before.
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“During our first few days of our internship at Hopewell Farms we have accomplished multiple tasks that have taught me and my peers a plethora of skill sets. During our first day of work (5/30) we were eased into our job mostly setting up our home for the summer, a beautiful camper that my co-worker/roommate had encountered back home. Afterwards we were taken and instructed our daily tasks that needed to be accomplished before our actual work began.
Daily chores include feeding the chickens, collecting eggs, leading the cows to a pasture to graze on the hay, and picking up free waste from the local supermarket (containing expired but fresh fruits and vegetables) that would be fed to the pigs. The cows are completely fed on hay that is primarily made up of big bluestem mixed with clover. This internship is a fantastic learning experience for us and I cannot wait to see what else it entails over the next few weeks.”
-Bub
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If you have ever worked with wood before you understand that no two boards are alike. Every tree produces a unique product that fits certain needs; softwoods for buildings, hardwoods for furniture, firewood and flooring. To understand how best to use each one requires a knowledge of it’s nature. No two pieces of wood are alike regardless of how uniform they may appear. Every piece of trim, dimensional lumber, rough sawn timber and finished floorboard comes from a source that cannot be ignored. The best boards come from the healthiest trees that grow slowly and straight.
Boards are squared and made to construct projects based on straight lines and right angles but trees are cylindrical and on closer inspection feature arcs and concentric circles depending on how they were milled. On the second week we installed a fence line along the gardens, digging three foot post holes with a shovel and bar. The four inch by four inch posts were treated at the base and then placed in each hole, one every ten feet for several hundred feet of fence line. I demonstrated how to use a level to plumb each post, how to run a string line to keep the fence running straight and how to tamp gravel and sand around the base to firm the posts solidly.
I showed them how to use a story pole to keep the spacing of each course of rail and then how to read each board for strength by placing one end on the ground and the other against your cheek and looking down the length of the board to discover it’s natural curve and how to place the crown up and the cup, or tree ring arc facing the posts to prevent it from pulling away from the posts over time. Then I let them go about the job on their own while I attended to other chores. In my mind I had done the best I could and the job, when they completed it was everything I would have done myself and I told them so. It would be hard to expect much more and it makes me smile every time I look out at it, fresh, clean wood running straight and true.
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The beginning of the week began a bit chaotic and was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster ride. There were times where as a group we were upset or frustrated while doing projects around the farm. I think a lot of it just had to do with uncertainty and just not asking enough questions. One example I specifically remember was when Pat and I were putting up fencing rails. It just seemed like it was one problem after another. It was either fencing posts not being equal lengths apart or just not knowing how things needed to be done. Just about every time we ran into a problem, Marc was always driving by with the tractor. He would stop and ask, “Everything okay?”, and we would tell him our problem and instead of Marc just giving us the answer or solution he would say, “well what do you think?”, kind of just guiding us towards the solution.
After several minutes of brainstorming and talking between the three of us, Pat and I would come with a solution to our problem. Then Marc would just get on the tractor and say, “There are no problems, only solutions”, and just continued working. I’m not sure if that just frustrated Pat and I more, but we always found a way to figure it out ourselves. I have never held a job where, I’m allowed so much freedom when performing tasks or even challenged on so many levels.
It’s one of the first times in my life where I have been treated like an adult. I’m being asked to analyze critical situations on the fly while performing tasks and having to come up with solutions. I’m finally starting to see the bigger picture in what Marc is trying to teach us. As Marc would say, “Sometimes you just have to read the board”. I believe that the team is finally starting to get used to how things operate on the farm, and were finally gaining some momentum as a unit.
-Wilex
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It’s been three weeks and in that time we’ve used miter saws, table saws and planers, installed fences, milled lumber, split firewood, fed livestock, slaughtered and butchered a hog, constructed a smokehouse, built a garden shed, created 100 feet of hugelkultur, planted squash, corn, pumpkins, beans, arugula, potatoes and onions. We’ve cleaned out manure from chicken coops and cow stalls, learned how to mow with a scythe and how to keep the blade in shape by peening and whetting. They know what a snath is now, and the difference between a grab hook and a snaffle.
They can read a tape measure, a level and framing square, know how to cut a riser, install lap siding, cut pickets and space them evenly. They’ve broadcast oats and sown clover by hand, learned how to cure pork bellies and slow roast chickens, understand how to lay in a bunker, weed a garden, repair a hydrant, use a chain saw and sharpen the chain. They have organized the shop, slowly accustomed themselves to put tools back where they came from, pick up debris, tedder hay, and put in a full day and another half of one on top of that without complaint. They’ve seen calves born, and tasted some of the best grass fed beef they’ve ever eaten and understand the entire process between the two.
I wish that I could say I have been as patient a teacher as they have been as students but I am no Andrew Franz. But I am doing my best and they are learning and day after day and it has become clear that we have all benefited from the arrangement. At the end of the workday they head down to the trout pond and you can hear their laughter faintly as they float around on inner tubes across the surface of the water and while my wife makes dinner for everyone it sounds like music to our ears.
I have heard a great deal about my son’s generation and all of their failings, but I have worked shoulder to shoulder with them and I can tell you that they have more potential in them than any other I have encountered. There is a unity with them and a purpose and maybe we just got lucky with our own son and his friends but I think that isn’t true. Something is coming and these will be the young men to make the future whatever it becomes and if we do our best to hand over what we’ve got for them to use things will be just fine. They’ll do their best to keep things plumb and level, put things back where they got them and do a solid job where at the end of the day they can look back over it all and be satisfied with the effort.
A bit younger than 7th grade I remember a Cub Scout Den meeting in which the Den Mother, God bless her heart, decided we would make boomerangs. She had some plywood squares, templates for us to outline the boomerangs shape and a power jig saw for us to cut them. She watched like a hawk as each of us took our turn with the saw and fashioned our boomerang then it was out into the field by her house when she lost control.
There is a knack to throwing a boomerang and some master it ( or just get lucky) quicker than others. She lined us up and we began to throw our boomerangs and, as luck would have it her son, Brian, happened to be standing in the way of the first successful boomerang flight of the day but he didn’t throw it or see it returning. It cracked him squarely in the face and unleashed a gush of blood from both inside and outside his nose. That ended the Den meeting!
I got whacked like that when I was 9. A neighbor boy & I were playing with his bow & arrow, and the string on one end of the bow came off and he began swinging the bow by the string while walking toward me. The end of the bow caught my head just before my left eye. My guardian angel was on the job that day or I wouldn’t be seeing this out of my left eye.
I bled like crazy and the kid’s Mom turned white when she saw me. But no stitches!
Well stated. Such a pleasure to read, and such a contrast to the cynical, bitter generational piece posted just a few days ago on TBF.
Here on my own homestead I have seriously entertained the apprenticeship program you’ve described. I doubt that i will manage it, but I take great pleasure in your success.
Many years ago, I took a group of juvenile delinquents to an outdoor museum called Museum of the Appalachians, a bit east of Knoxville off I-40. It featured life and the tools that accompanied it back from the 19th century. The kids were amazed that I could describe the use of most of the tools and implements in such detail until I explained that my everyday life involved many of those same tools. The visit inspired them enough to move, using simple log rollers and ropes, a huge log several hundred yards through the woods, and then to carve it for a totem pole.
Strange you should start with Mr Franz….I am Austrian by birth, and lost part of finger on a joiner exactly as you described….
I had a metal shop instructor just like Mr. Franz. He never hesitated to call anyone a ‘godamnned idiot’ and would physically eject anyone from the shop if they were fucking around. He wasn’t huge but would grab big kids and ‘bam’ right out the doors. It was hilarious.
When black kids started moving into the area, they weren’t used to that and he scared the living shit out of them. Since he called us ‘goddamnned polack’ (he actually was Polish) and other ethnic slurs, he called them ‘goddamnned nigger’. It was hilarious. They eventually learned it was not racism but because he demanded you do your very best or you were ‘a goddamnned fill-in-the-blank’. It was glorious.
Wolfie, Same thing happened to Stucky. Is that an Austrian thing?
I ran a very large window manufacturing plant once. We had some master craftsmen (joiners), who had decades of experience and who could make anything imaginable out of timber.
None had more than 9 digits. Some as few as 7. Work with timber over a lifetime, and buzzers, shapers and routers take their toll. Screw up with a power saw and it can be far more catastrophic than a lost finger. That meant career over. One guy crosscut his arm off when he lost concentration – young guy, not an old master, of course.
50 years working with all manner of wood working machines and I still have all my fingers and both eyes.
Which isn’t to say no matter how fucking frosty you are, and believe me, the machine I am using has 110% of my attention, accidents do happen. A friend of mine was working some stiles on a shaper and a piece of one of the knives broke and went right through his shoulder. Just like that.
That was some fine writing too, I enjoyed the story very much.
MMin – if you have worked full-time with the items I mentioned, you have done very well indeed to keep all your fingers!
These masters worked perhaps 80,000 – 100,000 hours on some of the most dangerous woodworking equipment. The most feared, and the one they had to use daily, was the big shaper. It had a cutter about the size of a soft drink can, with around twenty rows of cutters on it, and spun around at over 400 revs per second – or 8000 cuts a second. A 1/10 second mistake means being hit by blades 800 times.
The shaper was open and unguarded, to allow for the intracacies of the items being shaped. Only the most highly skilled – the masters – were allowed anywhere near the damn thing. It could get you in numerous ways. Flaws in the wood could have it catch and pull the wood forward unexpectedly. One guy had the wood splinter and it sent a foot long piece through and up his forearm, and he had to be opened wrist to elbow to get it out.
Having seen these folks work, all working with wood is not the same. When I say these folks were masters, it is no exaggeration. They could make compound curve windows and structures essentially free-hand, using but basic dimensions as guides.
And there were no younger folks coming up behind them to take their places. No one was willing to train, or pay for the training, the twenty years straight it required to gain the skill. Most of them were immigrants from Europe, and spent lon years of training from youth with their fathers and grandfathers. That system is dead.
When I was going to expand my wood shop to begin making our own doors(it was a side line for my glass studio), the friend I mentioned above, who owned the door shop that made our doors, gave me the run down on shapers.
After that, I decided to keep buying our doors from him.
Very wise. Shapers are for experts or fools.
That brings back some memories. We had an old German teacher who did industrial arts (drafting and electrical mainly) with us and taught history as well. Mr. Danz was his name. He was partly burned, having been blown up in Germany during an industrial accident at a plant he was working in, he too had no patience for silliness. And what a character. He would happily throw a stapler across the room at the back of the wall to get your attention if he didn’t think you were listening during class. It used to scare the shit out of us. Nothing like having a stapler explode on the back of a concrete wall to wake you up.
The whole generational perspective is one of generalizations, I suppose. There are lots of good millenials as you describe just as there are many, many boomers that do not fit the mold they are often written into. I guess the lesson is good people are where you find them. Thank God they still exist. A great piece and a good reminder.
“I am not a teacher by any means”
Pure self deprecating comedic gold.
Three quarters of my employees are milenials, with little or no college. I find many of your observations to be accurate. Thanks for shareing, best wishes with your summer on the farm.
Hardscrabble Farmer,
What a lovely story. Inspirational on many levels,
and good to know you have young men yearning
to learn. As you remember the tough Austrian, they
will remember you…with fondness and respect.
(I know your shop teacher was a brute) You are
kind in contrast, so the lessons won’t be tainted with
fear.
My question would be what is your wife cooking
up for all the testosterone burgeoning boys?
I wish I could visit for a meal! Of course, I would
bring a big dish to pass.
Suzanna
Shop teachers have to be brutes. These are dumb kids playing with dangerous machines for the first time in many cases. Our shop instructor doled out swats on the installment plan. Every Friday he had the boys line up and get their week’s allowance of swats. If you wanted, he would let you have 3 today and 2 the next week. It always turned out that if you took the bait, he’d give you 3 light swats and ask if you wanted the other two now since you’d only be worrying about it over the weekend. So you said, ok. He’d let fly with two rapid ass-scorchers that would suck the air out of you, you couldn’t even gasp out an ouch! Since no one complained audibly, the noobs always went for the bait all down the line.
A great story. Nice to see the light shine away from the Doom. If even only for a bit.
Shop teachers were lots of “fun” back in the seventies. Just like HSF alludes to. It was a “privilege” to be in the shop – not a “right”. No jacking around was permitted. But one day when the shop teacher was distracted, one idiot turned around to his buddy behind him while cutting a piece of wood, an in the next instant lost his right hand to the blade, as it sucked in his hand in less than a blink of an eye.
Even to this day, I never take my eyes off of my power equipment, or disrespect it’s awesome speed, because of that day in the shop.
It’s difficult for kids to learn lessons like that without experiencing it in some way. Just like it’s difficult for adults to learn about war. I try to teach my kids to learn from other people’s mistakes, but it’s a constant battle. Maybe it’s just something people just aren’t very good at.
A kid at my school learned the hard way not to stick his head out the window of the school bus. A tree branch took it off. I learned from that one.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that prepper, doomer types are just those who can learn from 3rd-hand experience. Just like no one has to tell me what can go wrong when I pick up an unfamiliar tool, I see what can go wrong when a complex society hiccups. It’s something some people are born with, but most aren’t. Maybe it’s just simple paranoia. But it’ll keep your limbs where they belong, and food in your mouth when most don’t have it. With a little bit of luck.
As usual, your writing has touched my heart in wholly unexpected ways, and I am moved to be a better person as a result. Your words feel deeply personal to me always, but in this missive, even more so.
Over the past year, we’ve invested in an entire lumber mill, purchasing huge pieces of used equipment at auction. Every piece was carefully chosen, with only a three criteria: pre-chipset, lightly-used with a lot of life left, and within our budget. That last one meant we had to drop out of a lot of auctions, deeply disappointed.
The purchase of this lumber mill is to build boats, as that is my husband’s passion, but one that he unfortunately allowed to be almost totally destroyed by his previous wife. It’s taken me 17 years to get him to believe that I want to be out on the ocean, and that I won’t yank that life away from him as did she.
In fact, not only do I want to be out on the sea, I believe there are boats inside my husband that the world needs, because I don’t know that we will always be able to count on air transportation as we do presently, and we live in the most isolated island group on the planet. We will either divided by water, or connected by it.
The lumber mill will allow us to mill and make our own tropical marine plywood, out of local lumber that otherwise would have gone to green waste.
Then we will design and build – on the same site – epoxy over plywood vessels that will be used for commercial fishing (also Tim’s past – he was a commercial fisherman for many years on a 56’er he designed and built himself, at 28 years of age), as well as cargo and passenger boats. The style of boat we will be building is a multihull that is called a “proa”. This is an extraordinarily boat with a very shallow draft, and when properly designed, is both unsinkable and uncapsizable.
Tim, my boat designer/engineer/builder husband, who has built ~40 wooden sailing vessels between 25′-56′, believes this boat can be extrapolated out into a 250′ cargo sailing vessel. But unlike what we did with Aquaponics (where we jumped in with a $250,000+ investment!), this time we’re smarting starting small.
We’re starting with a 37’er. We’ll sail the crap out of her, with drones shooting video and a safety boat, doing our best to test her upper limits, and to get her Lloyd’s certified. We will also use her to make money, to demonstrate how that can be done. Then we’ll do the same with a 75’er. Then will go up from there, as we gather data.
That’s our dream, and it’s time to make it real. Tim is turning 65 in just a few days, and he is feeling the weight of time pressing down upon him. It’s time to do this. We’ve been talking about it for the entire 17 years we’ve been together.
You folks don’t know me too well here, as I barely have the time to post. But I read everything here, and this is the only site I know of where it’s not a total waste of time to read the comments. From many of your comments over the years, I have begun to know some of your stories a bit, and I have appreciated you from afar for quite some time.
My husband is speaking in Marfa right now (where he’ll get to meet Robert Gore!). We’ve been teaching and living sustainable agriculture for 10 years, and now it’s time to do the same thing with sustainable transportation. We’re going to build boats out of local tropical hardwood that we mill ourselves. These boats will live off the wind, carrying cargo and passengers, as well as commercial fishing.
Thanks for reading, and if this sounds interesting, I’d be honored to share our progress here in a guest post or two – I am going to be chronicaling everything!
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO (chronicling)! And congratulations on pursuing your dreams.
Thank you! I was afraid that post would garner the tl;dr response!
I am working on a video now, showing some of Tim’s past life as a boat-builder and commercial fisherman. I’ll see if Admin would like to post it when it’s finished.
HSF has inspired me to write about cutting our first logs, which will be within the next few weeks. In the meantime, we have already graded the pad, and when Tim comes back from Marfa, we’ll be placing the band saws, the resaw, the planer, and the moulder with our 9-ton crane truck.
Any job is easy, with the right tools! We have been gathering the tools for a while now, and we are ready!
Guy Clark,Boats To Build
That link was dead, but I found it.
Thank you. I am crying. I have listened to it three times now, and I can’t stop crying.
FA- And please post a link to any existing or future website/YouTube channel documenting what you’ve described. Very interested.
Best of luck, although it doesn’t seem like luck will need to be a primary factor in your endeavors.
Thank you, Paul. Will do. And no, we’re not relying on luck!
Hawaii is a place where a lot of people show up with great ideas, often with a lot of funding. People talk a big talk, and then over time, they just disappear. I believe in Texas they refer to this as being “all hat and no cattle.” We’ve never wanted to be like that
10 years ago, when we started aquaponics, we didn’t talk about it to anyone, ever, for an entire year. We proved the concept to ourselves, and then we started sharing with others what we had learned.
This time, we don’t need proof of concept, because Tim was already done that. But we are going to start small, because that’s what our meager budget allows.
(Sorry HSF, didn’t mean to hijack your comments…)
If you could decipher the French cave paintings, from 30,000 (or so) years ago, I am certain that one of them would say “Kids today are no damned good. Spoiled, lazy, unwilling to chase the woolly mammoths, and gather the berries”. It has been ever thus. All we need to do is to put these people to meaningful work, with the tools to get the job done, the instructions they need, and the patience to correct the mistakes they will make as they learn. A dash of hardass mixed with some rueful memories of one’s own trials and tribulations is all that is required.
At this point in my life I have so many tools. I have no children/ or other relatives who know what the tools are or do, much less how to use them. I have tried to sell many of them for ridiculously low prices, but I suppose the world has changed a lot. Most would rather have an iPhone than a good tool/machine tool. Some of these pieces are for woodworking, many are for metal working. The woodworking tools are the ones I need the least now.
It’s a shame we are not geographically closer.
If I knew they would be appreciated, you could have them for a bit of syrup.
On the bright side, finally, I sold the Frick Eclipse traction engine (a tractor).
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I think the purchaser was Mennonite…
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I wish you lived in Hawaii. We’d give your tools a great home!
I need to buy a new pickup for my husband. I am trying to find one of these:
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Wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing this great, true tale! In its reading, I teared in joy with at least two measures of salty regret.
Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve — rhetorical pitfalls of fools, a role on occasion I played well over the long, winding course of 70 years. No Hercules, not even a wannabee one, at least I unlearned “impossibility”, whether the labor involves changing the past or wishing away the present. After all, my passing each milestone, hobbled at times, lost in others, picking myself up and out of deeply dug holes, brought this wayfarer to where I find myself today! My companion and wife for several decades now, this crafty, green-thumbed woman directs and manages our 20-acre WORKstead. In the meantime, and in mean times do we live, besides serving as sous chef and ranch hand, I persist plumbing The Matrix for what passes as “money” to fund what others view as madness.
A septic tank and leech field instead of a municipal sewer system? Horrors! A well instead of a municipal (fluoridated) supply of water? Gross! Bears and mountain lions, foxes and bobcats [both varieties!]? Lemme outta here!
Twelve years ago or so, one of my wife’s many sisters and her husband visited our “work in progress”. Upon leaving, grateful no doubt in the leave taking, sister-in-law declared, “All you’ve done is bought yourselves a lot of work!” Truer words hardly ever spoken here, henceforth, we called the land of our stewardship “WORKstead”, not “homestead”.
My father and I became fatally estranged before I reached adolescence. He had a woodshop in the basement equipped with many fine tools, each and all of which he took great care. I rejected his overtures to learn woodcraft, preferring instead science fiction, tennis, and my high school friends. I passed on learning skills I now have to learn today!
My prayers: May many, many young people today continue to flock to small, family farms, community assisted agriculture (CSA) operations, and other growth opportunities! May the USDA, FDA, and other predators, incorporated entities all, bug out and never look back at us again! May corpsies like Monsanto, Bayer, and the rest focused on scarcifying good food, criminalizing seed exchanges, and other evil missions dissolve to dust. Bricks in the wall indeed, those components of viral corporatism — fascism, by whatever name seems to fit best for you — erect the greatest barriers to restoring to prominence and pervasiveness our chosen way of life.
What a very fine piece of writing ! Thank you for your time and effort to write this for us.
“It’s one of the first times in my life where I have been treated like an adult. I’m being asked to analyze critical situations on the fly while performing tasks and having to come up with solutions. I’m finally starting to see the bigger picture in what Marc is trying to teach us. As Marc would say, “Sometimes you just have to read the board”. I believe that the team is finally starting to get used to how things operate on the farm, and were finally gaining some momentum as a unit.”
-Wilex
That, IMO is the secret to success in everything. I have almost no recollection of being taught these things myself. I tend to believe that I’m just extraordinarily observant and inquisitive with a natural will to learn. Wilex has got the hard part figured out. Most answers to life’s conundrums are right in front of us. Being able to “read the board” is a skill that it lost to most people.
HSF, teaching these young men these skills is a gift that will keep giving all their lives. This apprenticeship being your own son’s idea proves that. It’s a brilliant solution. Far more is being taught and learned than you may realize. Very cool.
I believe it’s all a matter of percentages! My son sounds a lot like yours know a lot of the same things and does them for Gods glory. He doesn’t hang out with the people we affiliate with this generation but like most of us hangs with his people like minded. My belief is that this is a very small percentage of this generation ie 25% is my best guess and that seems pretty generous.
Thanks and I hope I’m wrong.
“They know what a snath is now”
Do they know what a sneath is?
Great read. I had two Mr. Franz’s in my life. One was a very strict science teacher and the other was my uncompromising automotive instructor. I’ll never forget them.
Thank you for taking the time to write. May more men in our generation learn from your example in our interactions with the young!
Two things stood out for me in this article. The first was the shop teacher which reminded me of my high school shop teacher Mr. Rice. Mr. Rice was a no nonsense type person that didn’t say much unless he had something to say, so when he talked everyone listened. IIRC he had some part of one finger missing.
One of the stories I remember from High School shop was some guy/s made a cross bow using a car leaf spring. They tested it firing a piece of round stock steel and fired it at the heavy wood door of the shop. It went clean thru the door.
The other was how a group of young guys had the good fortune to be exposed to the broad range of experience available in a country environment, building structures, caring for animals, butchering of animals, cutting firewood, driving tractors, which is exactly what I experienced growing up in the country. I’ve always felt that despite all the work involved, it was a great way to grow up.
I’ve always felt that those who grew up in the city don’t know what they’re missing.
HSF – nice article. I am surprised/disappointed it has not gotten more traction. To me, there seems to be a lot of room for discussion of this article to grow.
For instance, I think that we as society have lost much, by no longer having the (significant) transfer of knowledge from generation to generation that once was routine. My father showed me how to work, how to work on cars and equipment, etc. He taught me simple things, like never put your hands in your pocket when working, and to think ahead and be ready for the next step or operation without needing to be asked. He taught me to sweep up if no other job was available.
These things I have also taught my kids. They did not get exposure to nearly so much as I, but I made sure to teach them, sometimes quite harshly in fact, about hustle, hard-work, being ready. It took some effort, but the message got through. It has served them well so far.
That so many young adults have never had this exposure is troubling. Your crew seems willing and eager, which is outstanding. But so many are not. And others, though perhaps wiling, are so far behind the curve they will never catch up.
Parents have an obligation to pass along skill sets and work ethic. Far to often it does not happen. Coddling is the name of the game, and being held accountable is not part of the family dynamic anymore.
There will be a reckoning.
Good comment llpoh: I like the optimism in this article (in fact HSF optimism is a big reason why I visit TBP), but I am not sure it applies across the board. There are definitely a solid number of good eggs (and these millennials seems like some of them) But the single biggest complaint from baby boomer/generation x employers that I hear these days is that the millennials have an overwhelmingly bizarre sense of entitlement and they do not want to work in fields that are not perceived as glamorous (i.e. farming, manufacturing, blue collar, etc) There are obviously exceptions, but it is a running theme that many younger folks simply do not want to work hard. Maybe that stems from the kind of trance that is induced by staring at a little rectangular magic machine all day, or maybe it stems from bad examples at home. I am not sure and again, I am certain this is not the case always. But there is definitely a significant portion of the population that is insouciant (thanks PCR) and that insists that the world owes them something.
And in a sense it does, not the world per se, but the state of the world as bequeathed by the last generation and the generation before them. These kids were left an economic and moral wasteland — as Mr. Quinn so aptly demonstrates time and time again with his articles. So while the world does not owe you anything, it is not unreasonable to expect that the generation before you would strive to leave the place in better shape than they found it. They did not. The millennials are going to be one of the first generations is over 100 years that are entering the adult world almost entirely behind the 8-ball — in almost every meaningful way. Is that a reason to give up? No, but it does help us understand why many millennials are despondent and uninspired. They are not operating on a fair playing field; the game is rigged. Add the corruption of traditional values (honesty and responsibility) to the mix and you have a veritable storm brewing and they rarely pass without taking a casualty or two (or millions). I am hopeful that the storm will pass (they always do), but I am not looking forward to the wreckage that it leaves.
Llpoh, I do not share your pessimism. Right before our eyes over the past 30 years or so, the internet has become the greatest collection of knowledge the world has ever seen, and it continues expanding rapidly. Our young people know how to tap into this knowledge trove — they surf it every day – most of the time for frivolous purposes, but they are developing skills that will be valuable as their lives increasingly turn serious.
We are entering an age of just-in-time learning, in which if you want to do something, you can learn a lot about how to do it in a short period of time, get it accomplished, and move on. Knowledge is no longer at risk of dying along with the masters who spent decades accumulating it — it is being recorded for posterity, and it is quickly accessible.
The pace of automating and mechanizing complex processes via robotics, computer-controlled machines and related developments is accelerating. There is reason to believe that little of lasting value in the realm of human knowledge need be forgotten or lost going forward. I just googled the term ‘wood shaping machines’ — there are 1,450,000 entries.
Bob – hope you are right. I believe anything digitised might well be eventually lost. One press of a botton and it disappears, unlike books.
Also, reading about using an unguarded shaper is not experience. It is information, but not sufficient to actually perform the task.
I think society is likely to regress, and the old skills will be needed. But they may be lost by then.
No offence Hardscrabble but back in the old days when you could actually make a living swingin a hammer, shop teachers were people who taught it because they weren’t any good at actually doing it. The WWII and Korean vets I came up with considered them lame assholes going for that safe govt job, they couldn’t hack it so they caved, just like building inspectors.
That doesn’t change the fact that he was an exceptional teacher.
Thanks to everyone for the comments on this thread, what we’re doing here this Summer feels important beyond the usual.
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Peening and whetting. I’m learning stuff. Cool. Ok, but I’m the guy here who has seen his fingers on the floor. My second day working construction, my job was to level jacks with a plumb line that supported the second floor we were about to pour. One of the jacks was stuck, so I pulled the pin to release it, and it came down with such force it lopped the ends off the index and middle finger of my left hand. Picked them up, and off to the hospital. They told me it wasn’t worth trying to reattach them, it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t like that answer, and started trashing the place. They called for some orderlies to subdue me, and a big fucker tackled me. He looked at me, and said, “(star?)”. He was one of my friend’s older brothers, and he was a radiologist in that emergency room. I told him what was up, and showed him my fingers, and he got busy getting the right people organized to sew them back on. I have no sense of touch in the pads of those fingers, and they are lumpy to the touch. But the fingernails grew back right, and the scarring isn’t noticable unless I point it out. I was very lucky.