J.D. Roth of the excellent personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly, read an advance copy of my forthcoming book, Made By Hand, and wrote a great post on the rewards of spending more time making things. He starts off his essay with an homage to his late father, who was a very handy guy. J.D.'s father built an electricity generating wind turbine, a sailboat, a telescope, his own accounting software, an electric sprinkler system for his (failed) nursery business, a line of wheat grinders and food dryers, and more.
When Kris and I decided in 1993 that we wanted to start our own vegetable garden from seed, my father helped me build a small greenhouse. We didn't use any blueprints; he was the blueprints. One long Saturday, we bought lumber and nails and plastic sheeting, and he stood around watching me, telling me what lengths to trim the two-by-fours and at what angles. He didn't sketch anything out on paper – he just told me what to do and I did it. That greenhouse is still standing.But all of these things barely scratch the surface. These are just the things I remember, and mainly his successes. My father did more: He wrote poetry (mostly bad poetry), played guitar, drew funny pictures, spent a couple of summers raising 40+ acres of wheat, flew airplanes, sailed boats, and more. When he contracted the cancer that eventually killed him, he bought a microscope so that he could draw his own blood and look at his dwindling supply of white blood cells.
Made by Hand: In Praise of Amateurs