The Skills We Don't Have Any More

My name is Bilbo, and I am the world's most inept handyman.

It's true, but it's not all my fault. It's mainly a matter of genetics.

My father is a handyman's handyman. He can build or repair just about anything, a talent which served him well through his long career as an advertising photographer when he had to create all sorts of photographic illusions in a crowded studio without benefit of computer-generated graphics. Need a picture of a man panning for gold in a stream...in the middle of February? No problem - build a running stream out of rocks, water, and plastic sheeting in the middle of the room. Water gushing out of the back of an armored car? Easy - shoot the armored car, shoot the water, and layer the exposures. An elephant wearing a ballet tutu? No problem...call the circus, convince them you're not crazy, rent the elephant and handler, and get it done. Dad is one of those talented people who can build furniture and illusions with equal facility, who can repair small appliances, re-upholster furniture, graft trees, make wine, and bring old lawn mowers back from the dead. My brothers Mark and Paul inherited this gift.

Me? I got his cooking skills. And Mom's facility with writing and language.

Sigh.

I got to thinking about all this when I read this article by Matthew Crawford in yesterday's New York Times: The Case for Working with Your Hands.

In this lengthy and fascinating article, Mr Crawford talks about the decline in our skill at working with our hands. He notes that "high-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers,'” to work in a society that values the ability to manipulate information more than the ability to build and repair objects. He says that, "now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses," but that, somehow, we value those skills less than those of the criminal idiots who wrecked the economy.

And we train more people to wreck the economy than to repair things around the house.

I was the despair of my wood and metal shop teachers...I think poor Mr Linton is still drinking to forget my crude and lopsided constructions. Agnes still looks askance at me when I grandly announce that I can effect some small installation or repair in the house, and always has my medical insurance card nearby when I take on any task more complicated than replacing a light bulb. She nearly had to be hospitalized for shock when I successfully hung two large chandeliers in the house without falling off the ladder or electrocuting myself.

Many years ago, comedian Alan King wrote that he was the world's most inept handyman. He said that he once tried to kill a spider with a hammer, then had to finish the job with a screwdriver.

I've taken on his mantle.

We live in a time when almost nobody actually makes anything any more. Ask yourself...when was the last time you met someone who makes his or her living using their hands and skills to actually build something tangible? When something breaks in your home, can you fix it? Do you know how to replace a faucet, re-wire an electrical outlet, replace a switch, install a light fixture, change the oil or repair the brakes in your car, or fix a leaky pipe? Perhaps you do. But in most cases, I'll bet that - like me - you find someone to do it for you. Even the professional mechanics we depend upon to repair our computerized cars need spectrum analyzers and sensors and flamminated polymetric widgets of all kinds to tell them what's wrong.

We've lost something valuable, here.

I actually can do a lot of minor things. I can fix a leaky toilet, do minor electrical repairs, change a tire on the car, and replace a broken faucet. But I can't build or re-upholster furniture, repair electronic devices, or use shoelaces and duct tape to fix a car that's died in the middle of an intersection.

But I can write about it, and that'll just have to do.

Have a good day. Build something.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo