Equal Opportunity

We had four shop classes at Buffalo Junior High; wood, metal, plastics, and electronics. In wood shop I had a few close calls. I unplugged a router to change the bit. Someone saw the cord unplugged and without looking to see what the other end was attached to, plugged it back in. I had just taken out the bit and was about to remove the wrench when the power went on. The router sprang to life and my wrench shot across the room nearly missing two friends and it flew out the wire-reinforced window. Thankfully it went through handle-first leaving the smallest hole it could. A few of us said the obligatory, “Whoa,” then went back to our projects. I got a new wrench.

For some reason the shop teacher decided to put me in charge of the movie he wanted to show. It was about different kinds of wood. It was going to be an exciting class. I sat back by the projector. It was about 45 minutes long. Halfway through I was supposed to change the reels. Someone reported our teacher was in his office sleeping. We had a laugh and kept watching the movie. At some point I fell asleep. I woke up to someone shouting, “The movie’s on the floor!” I had no idea what that meant. I looked up at the screen and it was still there. Then I looked down at the floor and almost the entire reel had somehow made its way to the floor in a large pile. I quickly turned off the projector and got a pencil to use to spin the film back onto the reel. All was well.

Wood shop wasn’t nearly as dangerous as metal shop. I was using a soldering oven. It looked like a little iron box with fire in it. To light it, you turned the two gas valves on and put the flint inside the oven and struck the flint creating a spark, thus, igniting the oven. Well, my flint was worn down and wouldn’t spark no matter what I tried. So I went to the shop teacher and he gave me a new flint. I returned to the oven and noticed the gas was still on. Oops. I turned it off for a second, turned it back on and hit the flint. The top exploded off the oven, hit the ceiling leaving a mark, and burned the eyebrows off my face. I distinctly remember Bill Lohse (I know you’re reading this Bill) looking at me and having a good laugh. I though he was kidding me when he said my eyebrows were gone. They take about three months to grow back. The redness went away in about four days.

In another incident we were making chisels. We took a short steel rod and heated it up until it was glowing in this huge furnace. Then we pounded it into shape just like little blacksmiths. The heating process took a while and I got a little distracted. Somehow I dropped my chisel into the furnace. Now, had I been smart I would have reported my error. But I looked over at the teacher, saw he was busy with something, so I cut myself a new steel rod and started over. At the end of the day my chisel was really cool. It looked like something you’d buy at Home Depot. The next day they couldn’t get the fire lit. They discovered a puddle of metal had cooled in the bottom of the furnace closing off the gas jets. It took them a week to fix it. Oops.

In 8th grade, the State of Minnesota ruled that girls now had to take shop along with home economics. Guys did, too. This was terrible for us guys but a true victory for the women-folk. One of the first things we guys had to learn was sewing. We were all horrible. We struggled with making raglan-sleeved shirts for weeks. The ultimate humiliation came when the teacher got the great idea to make everyone wear the shirts they made on the same day for a final exam. We all showed up looking like we were in some family singing group. I looked like a freakin’ hobo caught in a lawn mower. I wore my jacket all day.

Cooking was no better. I had a very hard time following directions for something I already knew how to make. Today was French toast. I had made French toast a hundred times so I didn’t need anyone telling me how to make it. So, I got bored. I noticed an old potholder sitting on the counter and decided to have some fun. I dipped the potholder in the egg mixture and started to cook it. I was hoping to serve it to one of my friends. Just as the potholder was reaching the peak of caramelization, the teacher busted me. It would be my first detention. I even got in trouble during detention retelling the story to amused classmates. I got an extra half hour.