"Working with my hands" has never been my strong point. Yesterday's struggle to erect cold weather protection for the oh-so-sensitive camellia bush outside the house once again resulted in misplaced wooden stakes and burlap cut too short on the top and too long on the bottom. How I wished that Chuckie Vohar would magically appear and make it all better.
Chuckie, you see, saved my posterior and probably several of my fingers in 7th grade Wood Shop. Our class assignment was to make a broom holder. This required use of the Monster Band Saw. In 1960, niceties like safety goggles and hand protection were not provided. Hey, what can go wrong with an untrained 12 year-old operating equipment that can slice through his wrist in a heartbeat? Loss of a body part was acceptable, but breaking the flexible saw band was not. This was punishable by a "trip to home plate". The student miscreant would straddle a baseball home plate several feet away from the shop teacher's desk, extend his arms to the desk, and Mr Piento would swat the evildoer's behind with a paddle that strongly resembled a flattened-out baseball bat.
Perhaps it was fear of home plate or just general ineptitude, but I was making a mess of my cut on the Monster Band Saw. The blade was bending and perilously close to snapping when Chuckie Vohar calmly shut down the machine, removed my mangled broom holder, inserted a fresh piece of wood and, without measuring or marking, made a perfect cut. He handed it to me with a typically Chuckie comment, "Fer Crissake, Dufton, we ain't got all day here."
In those days, South Scranton Junior High School placed its 7th graders in homerooms based on IQ testing. Homeroom numbers and IQ scores increased from the dregs of HR 301 to the intellectual elite of HR 314. Homerooms had the same schedules so we 7th graders could traverse the halls en masse between classes safe from the predation of 9th and 10th graders. Of course, boys and girls had to spilt for Gym and Shop. The HR 314 "boy geniuses" were joined by the only-slightly-less brilliant men of HR 313 for those masculine pursuits.
If not for Chuckie, HR 313 and 314 would have been decimated by the Lethal Machine Shop Lathe, the Perilous Print Shop Press, and the Shocking Electric Shop Circuit Board. Sadly, we didn't return the favor and help the Chuckster out in Algebra and Earth Science. After 8th grade, we didn't have to take Shop any more and, like an angel who has earned his wings, Chuckie quit school and joined the Army. It turned out that he was actually 15 years old in 7th grade which went a long way toward explaining how he could grow hair in places the rest of us could only dream about.
It's been 50 years and I'm still mechanically inept. How many times have I wished that Chuckie would appear over my shoulder, utter a multi-syllabic oath, and make it all better.
I remain convinced that God issues an equal ration of talent to each of us. The distribution of sub-talents is unequal though. Those who get lots of intellectual ability are shorted on mechanical know-how. Those who possess drive and ambition often lack compassion. I could calculate the allowable stress on the band saw blade to the fraction of a psi, but only Chuckie could sense when it was about to snap and stop the machine in time. Which skill is more valuable?
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