Sounds crazy, but I was born during WWII and the years after, my childhood, were years of scarcity. Sweets were rationed and I had few toys - but plenty of materials to make things with. So I learned to use (and was encouraged to use) all sorts of tools. I was wallpapering at 11, and learned the correct way to 'lay off' the paint on a panel door at the same time. Proper painting is very satisfying.
Today I have those equivalent little boxes, though not in a garage. And all the tools. My first interest in films was as much about taking apart the cameras and keepng them running in tiptop shape, as it was about what you could do with them.
I've never built a house, but I have done a lot of fencing, built two greenhouses, a large verandah, and replaced the wood tile 'pare' roofing on two wooden houses. Working with wood makes me happy - though it screws my back ;-)
I can do electrics - but in Finland your insurance only covers qualified professional work. I can't do plumbing and I can't fix cars.
The tools I use today I can't really fix - computers, recorders, cameras, printers etc. It annoys me that I can't repair these things. About the only gadget that I have that is not part of my work is an original iPod that someone else threw away, and I got a new battery installed. So I rescued it and was pleased to do so. Almost everything else I have is antique - but not valuable antique, just interesting old. Even my very loud but clean sound system is rescued from a 1976 pro recording studio. My SE 910i mobile will soon be 2 years old.
So I am a terrible shopper. I buy no 'stuff'. I would be a saint, except for the new lease car outside ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
Now, there's good stuff!
Joyce's father was a plumber and heating contractor, and her earliest memory of Christmas was that her father built her a little stool that he would take along on jobs for her to sit on while he worked,--so she could learn. She was very good with tools. After he died, they tried for three years to clean out his basement, and finally gave up. Brother Jim just adopted the stuff.
Along these lines, there were two striking differences between Paris and the US when we first came here 20 years ago.
First, here people could repair very little, and in fact, to do so was---a bit revealing, in a negative way. I could not believe that people would call a specialist to fix a stuck window. In Ohio, such skills were then almost universal. I think it was more a Paris thing than a French thing.
Second, we saw right away much knowledge about how to live comfortably and well- within an economy of scarcity. Such knowledge existed in the US too- but was washed away by the consumer culture. Before my eyes.
I hate to own things I can't fix. "There is mysterious music in democracy, when people decide to believe in themselves." ---Bill Greider, The Nation.
