Had decent shop classes in High School.

Wood shop - machines and sandpaper

Metal shop - still have the pin punch I made, but lost the screwdriver

Plastics - was having fun until my teacher asked me what I was making. I
could not tell a lie. "A bong" "What's a bong?" "A water pipe"

"DO YOU THINK THAT'S THE KIND OF THING YOU SHOULD BE MAKING IN
HERE!?!?!?!?" (eyes bugging out and face turning red)

One of the benefits of being the first in the herd to run astray is that
they often have not formulated policies for dealing with you. So they
don't. Not that I am making any lifestyle recommendations here.
>>> <Jimlemon@a...> 11/9/2008 12:45 AM >>>
Okay, so I'll drop in my two cents about shop classes. The LA City
schools junior high I went to in the late-ish 60's had a row of shop
classes we went through , right down the line, according to grade. We
started with drafting and moved on to basic electricity, woodworking,
metalworking, printing, and what they called 'industrial design', which
was a kind of free-for-all with an emphasis on plastics. we got to run a
platen press (very scary) in printing and cast aluminum in metal shop.
No chance of doing that today. Anyway, to cutto the chase, by the time I
was able to take a serious, big-kid woodshop classin high school, I had
long since been bitten by the woodworking bug, hadread everything I
could find on the subject, and was developing my skills with a teenage
fervor.(I had a bit of a home shop left over from my grandfather,and
made what use of it I could.) The high school shop in Santa Barbara
wasvery well equipped with good gear, both tailed and not, lots of room,
and agenerous and varied wood supply. The only thing it needed was a
teacher. I couldonly get into an extra-period class that ran after the
regular school day,and the dedicated woodshop teacher had gone home by
that time. They got themotorcycle mechanics class teacher to fill in. He
was hella nice guy, and dideverything he could to further my woodworking
education, but it didn't takelong for him, me, and the rest of the class
to realize that I was already a fairbit ahead of him in woodworking
education and experience. To put it in anutshell, I wound up teaching
the class. I'll never forget the look of halfwonder and half frustration
he had while watching me bandsaw out a cabriole leg.So since I basically
had carte blanche, I started building this immense=20 beechwood desk,
which I had a hard time getting finished because it spent s muchtime on
display at the Board of Education building. In later days, after ahitch
in the navy, I had intentions of becoming an industrial arts
teachermyself, but life had other plans, and it looks like I might have
been headed downa blind alley anyway. And now the new high school they
built right around thecorner from us has no shop classes at all. Ah, but
what might have been. Icould have walked to work doing a job I loved. I
think I'll go find some placeto whimper. Jim lemon Los Angeles .
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