Yesterday was a mess.

I was home earlier and in a mean funk. My neighbor had the day off and came by and offered to take me for a tour which I accepted.

We were about 35 miles and stopped for a bit. When we started up there was a loud thunk and voila! A ball joint broke.

He had AAA which wound up saving him a bundle as we needed a tow.

Anyway, it looked pretty grim as neither of us could figure how the driver was going to be able to get the pickup on the flatbed without tearing up everything.

I'll be damned but the driver pulled out a couple of pieces of 2x4s and between that, a floor jack and the way he operated the truck itself he got it on board without a single scratch much less a torn up fender.

It was a joy to watch such a fine craftsman and when he was done I dryly asked him if he had learned how to load damaged vehicles at Harvard. I said I didn't know that Harvard taught such craftsmanship.

He beamed.

Most people  don't see things with the same eye that I do. They don't understand things like weight distribution, friction and the like. A lot of people only know shuffling papers and think that people that do things like run a flatbed are of lower intelligence.

There are not a whole lot of people coming out of college that have the ability to run a piece of machinery that well and we certainly need people like that.

As usual, the 'My son's going to college' set doesn't respect those that decide to make their careers doing skilled things and sometimes look down on those that do.

This country needs fewer woman's dance studies majors and more skilled craftsmen. We have a shortage of vo-tech schools out there. The ones we have range from excellent to dismal.

My guess is the excellent vo-tech schools out there don't spend as much time teaching specific trades as they do craftsmanship.

A craftsman can generally pick up a trade with minimal instruction.

The guy running the flatbed truck could probably pick up a hammer and Skilsaw and do a pretty good job of building himself a halfway decent place to live if he decided to. He understands craftsmanship and understands that a house is simply a bunch of parts that are assembled. He'd probably make a few mistakes along the way but when he was done he'd have a pretty good house to live in.

While a lot of people don't have the aptitude for that kind of work, many do and a lot of these people wind up in college and find themselves deep in hock with a useless degree hanging on their wall.

While we certainly need engineers, scientists, mathematicians and the like, we also need hands on guys that can actually do things. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with someone working with their hands.

We really don't need any dance studies majors or underwater basket weavers, though. 

As for the guy complaining that he couldn't get a job with a Master's in puppetry we can simply say that you can't fix stupid. 








To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY