My shop teacher has died. When I was in the 7th grade, my middle school made boys take home economics and made girls take industrial arts. I would never have even walked down the hall where the shop rooms were otherwise. The entire wing of the school just seemed dirty to me—smelly and grimy and full of boys with dirty hair and finger nails. And the boys' locker room was directly across the hall.
Mr. Zachary was a wiry, no-nonsense man who walked us through the steps of making little projects our parents could keep, like a message keeper to hang by the phone. It holds a roll of adding machine tape and a pencil, and more than thirty years later, my mother still keeps it hanging by her telephone in her kitchen. We also made plaques gouged out with a router and decoupaged with old greeting cards. My mother has those hanging in her guest bathroom.
One of my favorite parts about shop class was the clean-up sink, a big half-round thing made of steel with a bank of spouts and a foot pedal to turn the thing on. Even if I didn't need to wash my hands, I liked playing with that pedal. You could stand there and tap it with your foot, and beat out a song from band--What Do You Do with A Drunken Sailor--and watch the water spit out like the big, synchronized fountain in Las Vegas. Mr. Zachary never appreciated that expression of creativity. Mr. Zachary was more likely to holler, "Stop that!" than to offer praise for my inventiveness.
Well, Mr. Zachary has passed away at the age of 79. From reading his obituary, I learned he served in the 101st Airborne between 1948 and 1952 and was very involved in his American Legion Post. I didn't know that side of Mr. Zachary, but I did know the side that was patient enough to teach a bunch of disinterested girls in goggles how to use a router and a band saw and an electric sander. And not one of us walked out with even a scrape. Now, that's some skillful teaching.
Mr. Zachary was a wiry, no-nonsense man who walked us through the steps of making little projects our parents could keep, like a message keeper to hang by the phone. It holds a roll of adding machine tape and a pencil, and more than thirty years later, my mother still keeps it hanging by her telephone in her kitchen. We also made plaques gouged out with a router and decoupaged with old greeting cards. My mother has those hanging in her guest bathroom.
One of my favorite parts about shop class was the clean-up sink, a big half-round thing made of steel with a bank of spouts and a foot pedal to turn the thing on. Even if I didn't need to wash my hands, I liked playing with that pedal. You could stand there and tap it with your foot, and beat out a song from band--What Do You Do with A Drunken Sailor--and watch the water spit out like the big, synchronized fountain in Las Vegas. Mr. Zachary never appreciated that expression of creativity. Mr. Zachary was more likely to holler, "Stop that!" than to offer praise for my inventiveness.
Well, Mr. Zachary has passed away at the age of 79. From reading his obituary, I learned he served in the 101st Airborne between 1948 and 1952 and was very involved in his American Legion Post. I didn't know that side of Mr. Zachary, but I did know the side that was patient enough to teach a bunch of disinterested girls in goggles how to use a router and a band saw and an electric sander. And not one of us walked out with even a scrape. Now, that's some skillful teaching.
Comments
He certainly sounds like one of the good guys, Robyn.
Though you must have driven him to distraction with your musical sink antics.
I wanted to do carpentry and metalwork at school, but my school let "oiks" have fun with that, while we "girly swots" were forced to do five years of compulsory Latin instead.
"Dolor hic tibi proderit olim ", as we lamented.
By the way what's a shop teacher?
Rich, I am not at all surprised that you made knives while the teacher wasn't looking.
Lynn, students of either gender can still taking cooking here, but I don't think many schools teach sewing anymore. A shop teacher is an industrial arts teacher--the guy who teaches metalworks and woodworking and mechanics.
Yeah, that has served me real well....
It's part of a quote from Ovid, taken out of context (as schoolboys like to do) …
Roughly translated, it means "This pain will come in useful someday".
Five yars of compulsory Latin certainly was a pain, but it has come in useful doing crosswords.
Dive, you do know public school rarely teach Latin anymore.