Jim again,
I know that Tammy wrote a bit about me in her March 10, 2023 post “Would You Let this Little Guy “Fix” Your Broken Toaster?”. I have always been curious about how things work and how they go together. From a very young age, I can remember being with my dad when he was working in his shop in our basement building and repairing things. I was fascinated by the plumber installing a new toilet in our basement. My grandfather was a farmer in western Pennsylvania and had a lot of tools and implements around the farm. I always wanted to be around to see how they worked and what they could do. Even as our family moved to northeastern Ohio, we spent a lot of time on the old farm. My uncles started their careers in the building trades and were always working on projects around their places and on my grandfather’s farm. I was able to help them put a new shingle roof on the family farmhouse when I was 10 or 11 years old.
Our neighbor in Ohio put an addition on their home when I was in middle school and I watched the construction intently from my bedroom window. I saw it start with the foundations, then to framing, to roof and siding, and finally doors, windows and interior finishes. I loved seeing land that was once a gravel parking area transformed into a garage with a bedroom above.
My father helped organize a few church youth work camps when I was in my early teen years. We traveled to western New York to help build some storage areas for a church in a Native American community. We traveled to Arkansas to work on interior framing for an ancillary structure for a local church there. I was an active participant in these projects and honed my skills with cutting wood and hammering nails.
A friend of my father’s hired me when I turned 16 to work the summer with his construction crew. They were in the process of doing a gut renovation on a beautiful old home. He was a quality custom contractor doing real plaster walls and cedar siding exterior. I was a general laborer but it gave me exposure to more of the trades and quality workmanship.
My high school class was a small one and everyone knew everyone else. A small group of us were taking a drafting class together. Our first year was basic technical drawing but one of our classmates had a father who was an Architect with his own firm. She was able to arrange with him for us to visit his office and a couple of his projects. I along with some of my classmates were hooked. We were able to convince our drafting teacher to make our next year an architectural drawing class. We designed a house and built a framing model of a lot of the stud work.
Those high school classes led three of us to apply to the University of Cincinnati’s architectural program for college. All three of us were accepted and graduated together. At a recent 50 year high school reunion, we all reunited and reminisced about our school days together. Our classmate, the daughter of the architect we visited way back then, mused that she wished she had gone our same direction to be an architect but her father was too much of a chauvinist and said the architectural profession was for men. This was the early 70s and, thank goodness, times have changed.
Runaway Ridge has offered ample opportunities for us to continue my building and construction activities.
From our modest shack (a tiny house before they were cool) to a picnic shelter, a washhouse and a barn to our current construction of the cabin. With each construction effort, I learn more and improve my skills.