As far back as I can remember, I was always “making” stuff. Roads and dams in the dirt, complex Tinkertoy projects, electronic stuff.
Today I asked whether my friends and acquaintances were also tinkerers. Some were and some weren’t. The line was drawn exactly by father’s occupation. Sons of professors never got their hands dirty. Sons of other occupations, from bricklayer to businessman to telephone lineman, used their hands.
Why was I an exception to the prof rule? Maybe because my father really should have been a carpenter. He was a competent enough teacher. He was a GREAT woodworker. With basic hand tools, and without seeming to plan or measure, he made bookshelves, decks, staircases, complex angled partitions with cased doors, little statues of animals, evaporative coolers. Whatever he thought about, he completed, and it was always straight and functional on the first try. No debug.
Polistra's Mill 