Hobbies and Interests: What are you into?

I was chatting with a co-worker the other day and I realised I never wrote a listing or explanation of all the stuff I have gotten into. Up until now, all anyone has pretty much seen is my claim that I am into a lot of things and then I write about the same things over and over. Manga, Japanese, events/conventions, hanging out, video games, computers, internet…. I am sure you are wondering why I claim to have many more interests when I can’t seem to shut up about all the stuff I am currently into.

I think it is time to share some of my past stories with you. Where shall I begin? There are some blanket topics, such as Girl Scouts, YMCA Indian Princesses, Soccer, Day Camp and Residential Camp, High School, Part-time jobs and Computers; however, inside each blanket lies layers and layers of little things, and let’s not forget the items that fall outside the blankets and can be considered totally random.

Since the conversation with a co-worker brought the topic up, let’s start with basic carpentry. This category can be covered by Day Camp, YMCA Indian Princesses and High School. To start it off, I need to backtrack just a little.

When I was in the lower grades of school, a new group was just making its way into the area. The YMCA Indians were in existence already, but they were still fairly new and it hadn’t yet been established within our area. Since I was able to do things with mom via the Girl Scouts, Dad needed a way to hang out with me as well. I don’t pretend to know what his thoughts were, but I am thinking mom probably found the information and gave it to him to start things off… or maybe I brought a flier home from school. I don’t really know that answer. Anyway, after attending an introductory seminar, Dad and I began what ended up being a family tradition. We joined the YMCA’s Blackhawk Nation and became Y-Indians. My brothers were not yet old enough to join a tribe so for a while it was just me and dad. In those days it was the dads and girls tribes and the dads and boys tribes, and they only ever interacted at certain events. Later, well after I was already out, that changed and there was more interactions among the groups. I am not sure what it is now, but I have a feeling a tribe is now mixed.

One of the first group projects for the tribe was to do a head for a totem pole. Each family got a block of wood that was to be turned into a depiction of the family and end up being joined with the other family blocks to create a tribe totem pole. In order to work on this, we went to a public-ish wood shop and one place I am sure I would get people in trouble for mentioning since I remember going in through a window. We didn’t do that until we were running behind though. Dad and I came up with an idea, he did the major work, but I did get to learn how to do some chiseling and minor cutting of things, but it was really heavy work for a kid. After the carving was done and the band saw work was completed, it was time to glue, paint and decorate the head. This is the first thing I remember when I think of carpentry and woodwork.

Although this wasn’t technically carpentry yet, though I have since learned that some of the work I learned at this time would’ve been work given to young apprentices, it started one of my interests. When I was in day camp, there were pre-cut wood projects to put together. I got to know the wood shop director–it turned out he was the guy who let us into the public-ish wood shop when I was making that totem head–and when I was old enough, there was weekly woodworking classes/sessions where people could just show up and do whatever project they had or pay for the a new one. I remember going to the shop, looking at the available projects for the week, paying my project fee and then learning how to use the tools. I would guess I was in late grammar school, around 7th grade perhaps as early as 5th grade, since I also invited friends with me and, later, siblings.

Learning about the band saw was fun for me. The wood shop director let us do the broad workings, such as cutting off the outside of an easily managed large piece, but since we were kids, he asked us to let him do the details. When he was doing the details he would explain exactly what he was doing. “For this one I am going to drill a hole here and use a mounted jig saw, for this one, I am going to cut a straight line from the outside to the interior and then cut out the shape…” and so on. I am not sure I ever got to work the detail before I stopped going to the field house, but he explained in such detail that I feel like I had done it myself at least once. Later, while working on other projects with dad, I got to use his jigsaw and I know I followed the techniques taught to me at the field house.

Once, I was in a summer art school at one of the local parks, one of the projects was to create a sculpture out of supplied materials. The wood shop director also worked at this park and for this class he supplied a rather large basket of wood scrap. There may have been other things to use, but I ended up using wood and paint for this. I remember spending time at the basket and picking a variety of shapes. Then, after taking it all back to my station, I piled the wood into some weird creation using wood glue to hold it together and painted it bright orange and dark blue.

Sculpture isn’t something I am good at, but it was fun. I would rather have cut the shapes myself. In case you are curious what I did with the sculpture when the class ended, I can tell you. Other students left their sculptures behind and were probably eventually thrown away. I took mine home and it was in my room for many years. One day, some kids I took care of as a babysitter for were having a yard sale and invited me to add stuff to the table. One of the things I brought was the sculpture I was getting tired of. I didn’t really expect someone to buy it. It really was just me being my typical goofy self, I remember being curious what people would say or do. While I was minding the tables for a while, someone came along and asked me about it. I told them it was an art project for an art camp and we chatted about it for while. I told him I didn’t have much love for it anymore, but I couldn’t just throw it away. The guy gave me money for it and asked me to sign the bottom. I was bemused, I don’t know how much he gave me, it went into the box of money, but the story is mine to tell now. I wonder if it still exists.

Still no real basic carpentry mentioned. In addition to these fancy things, I did typical things too. When new self-assembly stuff came into our house, I grabbed it. I followed the directions when they let me do it myself, and read the directions when I was helping instead. There was a lot of this, I remember assembling a lot of things: shelves, cases, bicycles, toy houses. One year I received as a gift a woodburning kit which included a woodburning tool and various additional materials, while my brothers received various other woodworking supplies–a build-it out kit with a clock and a birdhouse and some other things and a kit that involved pounding nails into metal and mounting the result on wood. I left their stuff alone mostly, though I did tell them if they finished their projects they could play with my woodburning tools. Everyone liked my tool, I even once returned home after school to find someone had used it without my permission. They never did complete their own projects. I found their remnants years later and completed what I could since by then they were public domain. My woodburning supplies never got exhausted because after a few intense flurries of action, I stored the items to be completed later when I was better as using the tool. I still have a few bits and pieces, they are still together with both my original woodburning pen and the newer one I bought only a couple years ago.

Nope, no basic carpentry yet. Though I would like to point out, in just the processes I have mentioned thus far, I learned how to follow direction, cut to measure, stylize and decorate. My dad had a woodpile in the basement. It didn’t just sit there. There were projects that involved using saw horses and other ways of measuring and cutting. When our family put drywall in the bathroom as we were remodeling, I learned about plumb- and chalk-lines and Levels; I learned how to tear out walls and put walls in; How and where to put screws in the wall; I learned about the tape that goes in the corners and the stuff that goes on them to make the wall smooth. Over the years living at home and updating the house and fixing things, I learned the basics, but the bits didn’t form a whole in true basic carpentry until I joined the stage crew at my high school.

When I was in High School, after many years of being in plays and singing in choruses in grammar school, I tried out for musicals. I learned how poor my singing and acting were at that time, but I couldn’t just leave drama alone. When I didn’t make it onto the cast due to my inability to learn dances quickly, I joined the stage crew. That one year of producing “Hello, Dolly!” probably was one of the best years ever. Our crew director, a man called Merrill, taught us all how and why to build what we needed. Through Merrill, I learned to take the techniques and skills I had learned all my life and apply it to something useful. We built stairways, trapdoors, walls and boxes that became stages, and then learned how to paint/decorate it all.

After successfully completing the play and learning all these marvelous new skills, I was inundated with requests from family. We had decided we were going to move and we needed to redo the entire house to make it salable. My mother was always redecorating the house once the old wallpaper and paint we had lived with since we moved it was stripped from the walls back in my grammar school era, but now it was time for a few major changes. For the record we didn’t move until over a decade later, but the point was we were trying. We demolished a set of bookshelves we had had forever, they were a blond wood and took up the lower half of one whole wall, the above area was filled with a dark brown cork so we could fill the walls easily with decorations, it belonged to the 70s. We repainted the parts we were keeping and installed our previously free-floating temporary fireplace into the center of it all. To make it fancy, my mother bought the supplies to make the entire base look like marble; a technique I had learned with Merrill. By the time we left the house finally, we fooled many a person. They were surprised to find the marble was actually wood! I consider this a success.

However, the major success I claim was when I assisted my father in building a solid wall with a door. As my brothers were aging, they wanted their own rooms and the only way we could do this was to take away my father’s workroom which was for all intents and purposes a den. Dad was a smoker and he needed to be at the extremities of the house so that Mom, who is allergic to smoke of all sorts, wouldn’t be overwhelmed by it. We converted our previously party ready back porch. The room was already covered solidly, but still outside the house technically. We cut it in two parts: One part was to become dad’s new den, the other was to be storage. We had old cabinets from when we remodeled the kitchen, they were attached to walls and were supported read to become the new storage area. For Dad’s den we needed a wall separator. Between the two of us, Dad and I created a wall that fit in the space and we only anchored it in place. It was fun buying all the supplies and renting a saw-table. By the time we were finished, we had a real wall, real door and a whole storage area that was all in existence until we left the house. That was at least a decade. Built to last? Yes!

….. and that is one story. While I was going through this, I had to nip and cut and try to keep it all on-topic. Nearly every other paragraph could lead to more stories.

What interests do you have? would you care to share them with me and whoever reads these posts? I would love to hear from you.