Learning the Tools
Grade seven was a paradoxical year for me. On Saturdays, I pretended to be quiet and pious in confirmation class aside from my furtive winks at the pretty girl. Yet on Wednesdays, I was as noisy as I could be, banging the hell out of timber boards or tin sheets with a hammer and real religious fervour.
Pop was a tools man. Given I had lurked in his shadow since I began to walk, I wanted to be one too. My Uncle Alan, a bridge carpenter, was one but Dad wasn’t. It befuddled me that my father couldn’t drive a nail or use a screw driver. Maybe, Dad’s fingers lacked the dexterity required. Perhaps, I inherited my dexterity from Mother. She certainly had it to thread needles. Consequently, my father owned very few tools. Pop had probably given Dad the hammer and the hand saw hidden away in our shed although he came by when anything in our house needed repair.
I often ogled Pop’s tools. Alan stored his tools at Pop’s place too. I was careful not to let my light fingers anywhere near those. I learnt that tools were to men what jewellery was to women only useful. Whenever Pop worked with his tools, I watched intently. As I grew, he taught me their uses and how to handle them safely then let me help him. Sometimes, we worked together with the cross cut saw to fell trees. Young though I was, the saw was safer and easier to use with one of us at each end.
In my final two years of primary school, the Education Department gave me the opportunity to attend rural school one day a week at a much larger district school. This scheme strove to prepare boys, without academic prospects due to their circumstances, for a trade, and girls for home duties in readiness for marriage. Despite the government department’s dictum, my school teacher strongly discouraged me and other students from participation. Fortunately, the decision was ours and our parents to make. Since the Railway would issue me a travel pass, my parents didn’t care what I chose to do. So, of course, I was going! I was born to be a tools man. Ronnie was going too. His father didn’t mix his words with the school teacher. With the two class brains absent, the dunderheads remained and only wished to do diddy squat. Our school teacher found the situation quite an inconvenience. For the other four days a week, he attempted to mentally intimidate us whenever possible in front of our classmates. We knew his game and acted, as best as we could, like saints.
So, Ronnie and I caught the train to Beenleigh and walked the kilometre to the school. We were now thirteen and quite familiar with catching trains. Children from a few other country schools joined us. Before long, on our train trips home, an orange peel fight would erupt amongst everybody. Fortunately, we jumped off at the first stop and escaped these and the usual reprimand from the guard.
The first day was a big deal for us. We met the twenty plus other boys in our class. We felt a bit lost to start with amongst so many strangers. We had to find our way around the school too. This had lots of buildings, numerous teachers and hundreds of students compared with our one room one teacher school with forty children from the age of five to fourteen. It was really three schools in one, a primary, a secondary and the rural school with its two big sheds. When I saw inside these sheds, my eyes opened in wonderment. I wanted to use every tool in them. I eyed the electric powered tools enthusiastically. Pop didn’t own any of these! One shed was set up for woodwork and the other for tin smithing and technical drawing.
I thought our teacher was an odd man. Ronnie conferred. We found his mannerisms strange. Today, a person would say he was effeminate. Back then, we, country lads, were innocent of different sexual orientations. Soon after, I’d unfortunately see him drunk outside of school hours. Sadly, the harsh social judgement of the community cost him his job. The man didn’t act inappropriately or unkindly towards us or any boys we knew.
When the new teacher walked in, every single boy’s mouth gaped open in utter silence. A real hero stood before us! A very masculine one! This teacher was Wally Walmsley, an all round cricketer and the coach for the Queensland Cricket Team. Back then, cricketers worked in day jobs too. This hero was a batsman capable of batting in any position and was a master of the leg break and googly bowling techniques. Nobody played up in class! Of course, we boys played cricket with him at lunch breaks.
In woodwork, I learnt joinery, in particular how to dove tail two pieces of wood together with intersecting cut teeth. If one wanted to become a furniture or cabinet maker, they needed this skill. I was just happy I could now repair things that broke at home. The best thing I made was a sewing box with drawers, which I graciously gave to Mother. I really enjoyed working with wood and was quite skilled at it given Pop’s earlier teaching. I found tin smithing more difficult however. Cutting tin sheets into patterned pieces and hammering these into the required shapes to make cake tins and billy cans was easy enough. Alas, I struggled to solder the joins between the pieces of tin neatly. Whilst this worried me at the time, I needn’t have been concerned. I wasn’t destined to be a plumber. Besides, soldering would soon become an obsolete skill when the fabrication of metal tanks and the connection of metal pipework ceased.
Alas, the moment I picked up my pencil and slid my set square and T square around a large sheet of paper in my technical drawing class, my imagination came alive and my ability shone. I was already good at drawing. I realised a plan was just the specifications for a pattern to construct something. I knew about patterns and measurements. I had watched Mother draft and cut out hundreds of patterns for the dresses she sewed her clients. I also had a natural eye for perspective and could draw it in my diagrams. Perhaps, my roaming up and down dale over the countryside had developed my spatial awareness. Then, with my aptitude for mathematics, everything in technical drawing made sense.
I no longer knocked pieces of wood together in a haphazard way to build something. I calculated the size and measurements for my projects and drew scaled plans with different drawings for their various elevations and perspectives. I cut the timber or tin according to these plans and the scales required and built my projects. I used my brain to design and my hands to construct.
I grew from wanting to be a tools man, who followed instructions, to be a design man, who determined the instructions. I’d subsequently learn that draftsmen were the best paid of the trades too.
I had discovered my gift; a gift that would open the door to my future!