Some recent exchanges between my self and fellow formumite marcinek, caused me to have some reflective thoughts today. We were talking about our fathers, and it struck me that in many ways they had been very much alike. I think they must have been from about the same or close, in generation, as they had a similar outlook on simple tooks.
I look back at my fathers generation, and I marval at how little they had in the way of techno gear they would carry on an edc basis. So much of what we consider normal, if not manditory, personel gear had not even been invented yet for them. Yet this was the generation that did so much. No cell phones, computers, multitools, jet airliners across whole oceans in just hours. Instead they used slide rules, wrote letters, and had the nesseary patentence to wait for a return letter.
It was interesting that in a day with no multitools, marcinek's dad and mine both carried one of those round keychhain screwdrivers with the four different size bits around the circufrence. I remember watching my dad fix a gummed up reel on a fishing trip once, using his. the reel was old, dirty, and dad took off the side of the reel with his keychain screwdriver and whittled a very pointy probe with his little peanut. Using the point of his stick he scraped out the gunk that was gumming up the gears. But he was not stopping there. He always had a little stub of a pencil in his pocket, as pens in those days leaked and were unreliable, and he scraped the pencil point with his pocket knife till he had a little pile of graphite and lead dust on the cover to the reel. He then used the point of his peanut to pick up and drop the dust on the moving parts of the internals of the reel. It worked very smooth with his make do dry lub on the gears. His round pocket screwdriver put the side plate screws back in, and we fished away. No mirracle spray super lubes from a can, or pocket tool kit. Just some graphite dust and a keychain screw driver, and some inventivness. I was at Sears today, and they still have them for .99 cents. They seem just like my dads, and get this- they still have "Made in U.S.A" on them!
Marcinek's dad had a nail clipper on his keyring with his pocket screwdriver. His dad being a machinist, I strongly suspect that he found it very usefull as a light duty wire cutter, and the nail file on it would handle small phillips screws as easy as the nailfile blade on a sak cadet.
I wonder in these days of super gadjets and techno approach to almost everything, if we are not loosing something in our nature, to atrophy. The ability to improvise and overcome problems and obsticles using just our wits and common sense. I wonder how the next generation is going to handle things if for some reason their cell phone goes dead, the computer crashes, and they have to do something in an emergency?
They called our fathers generation "The Greatest Generation" because of outstanding human achievment. Victory in WW2, harness of the atom, mans venture into space, and much more. But they seemed to do all this with a common sense aproach to things. When I read the book "Yeager.", I recall General Yeager making the point that alot of his best fellow test pilots were guys who grew up working on things. He himself grew up learning to work on the pumps at the natural gas fields his dad worked at. If a washing machine broke, they had to fix it because they could'nt afford a new one too often.
Like marcinek, my dads been gone many, many years now. He was a better man than me. If he had his pocket knife, a keychain screwdriver, and a little something from the stuff in his pockets, it seemed like he could fix darn near anything.
I don't know about this next generation. I hate to think we're living in the time of Romulus Augustus.
I look back at my fathers generation, and I marval at how little they had in the way of techno gear they would carry on an edc basis. So much of what we consider normal, if not manditory, personel gear had not even been invented yet for them. Yet this was the generation that did so much. No cell phones, computers, multitools, jet airliners across whole oceans in just hours. Instead they used slide rules, wrote letters, and had the nesseary patentence to wait for a return letter.
It was interesting that in a day with no multitools, marcinek's dad and mine both carried one of those round keychhain screwdrivers with the four different size bits around the circufrence. I remember watching my dad fix a gummed up reel on a fishing trip once, using his. the reel was old, dirty, and dad took off the side of the reel with his keychain screwdriver and whittled a very pointy probe with his little peanut. Using the point of his stick he scraped out the gunk that was gumming up the gears. But he was not stopping there. He always had a little stub of a pencil in his pocket, as pens in those days leaked and were unreliable, and he scraped the pencil point with his pocket knife till he had a little pile of graphite and lead dust on the cover to the reel. He then used the point of his peanut to pick up and drop the dust on the moving parts of the internals of the reel. It worked very smooth with his make do dry lub on the gears. His round pocket screwdriver put the side plate screws back in, and we fished away. No mirracle spray super lubes from a can, or pocket tool kit. Just some graphite dust and a keychain screw driver, and some inventivness. I was at Sears today, and they still have them for .99 cents. They seem just like my dads, and get this- they still have "Made in U.S.A" on them!
Marcinek's dad had a nail clipper on his keyring with his pocket screwdriver. His dad being a machinist, I strongly suspect that he found it very usefull as a light duty wire cutter, and the nail file on it would handle small phillips screws as easy as the nailfile blade on a sak cadet.
I wonder in these days of super gadjets and techno approach to almost everything, if we are not loosing something in our nature, to atrophy. The ability to improvise and overcome problems and obsticles using just our wits and common sense. I wonder how the next generation is going to handle things if for some reason their cell phone goes dead, the computer crashes, and they have to do something in an emergency?
They called our fathers generation "The Greatest Generation" because of outstanding human achievment. Victory in WW2, harness of the atom, mans venture into space, and much more. But they seemed to do all this with a common sense aproach to things. When I read the book "Yeager.", I recall General Yeager making the point that alot of his best fellow test pilots were guys who grew up working on things. He himself grew up learning to work on the pumps at the natural gas fields his dad worked at. If a washing machine broke, they had to fix it because they could'nt afford a new one too often.
Like marcinek, my dads been gone many, many years now. He was a better man than me. If he had his pocket knife, a keychain screwdriver, and a little something from the stuff in his pockets, it seemed like he could fix darn near anything.
I don't know about this next generation. I hate to think we're living in the time of Romulus Augustus.
