Basic mechanics
My technical education was tied to the local barber shop. Where else would I get to sit beside a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines, waiting my turn in the big chair? Given that my father was a firm believer in crew cuts, the visits were frequent; I rarely missed an issue during that crucial period of my youth when my mind was an empty barrel, waiting for knowledge.
There were tools, and suggestions on using tools, and comparison of technological advances. Locally, I had none of those things, since my father wasn’t imbued with great mechanical wizardry. Yes, he did things to his cars that then required professional redress, but I was never handed a wrench and told to go and see what I could do. And so I didn’t, at least not for a long time. I had the basic tenet of “righty-tighty-lefty-loosey”, but that was accidental. Thankfully, the barber shop library was available.
And that wasn’t all; the local striped pole also followed adventures in the Amazon forest, thanks to Argosy. I’d love to revisit some of these titles, if only to match the stories up with Snopes. My fiction filter wasn’t finely tuned, at the age of eight. Or nine.
By twelve, I’d moved to a new place, and getting my hair removed was less important (due, in part, to my father working hours away). We had to budget family time, so my hair grew, and my exposure to the fundamentals of the male catalog gave way to real life. From time to time, I followed school friends into the school “shops”, but my schedule had a more academic tone, and I never actually got to wire up whatever, or destruct wood until I was out on my own.
There’s more to tell; we’ll get back to it another day.
