One summer evening many years
ago we were having a barbecue at my Mom and Dad’s house. The kids were romping in the yard and Mom and
I were puttering in the kitchen, hauling out bowls of potato salad, piles of
cantaloupe, and a still-warm chocolate cake lathered with oozing fudge
frosting. Through all this activity Dad was attempting to start the barbecue.
We didn’t pay him much attention at first but as time went on his grumbling turned to ranting, which turned to raving. He’d piled on the briquettes and dumped on the starter but it refused to light. He gave up on matches and tried a burning stick. (This was before those automatic lighters.) He poured on more fluid. It still wouldn’t light.
By now the getting-ready chores were done and we were all waiting patiently, hungrily, for the barbecue so we could toss on the steaks. Mom and I sprawled in the lounge chairs to watch the Dad and Grill Show. Since he was an Archie Bunker wannabe, it was really quite entertaining.
Finally, he stomped off to his shop. A few minutes later he reappeared, dragging across the driveway his monstrously huge welder behind him. With a great flourish he shooed the kids to safety at the other side of the yard, donned his welder’s hood and gloves, and fired the thing up. It was like killing a fly with a machine gun. Within seconds the paint had melted off the grill and the little briquettes were glowing. They were so fired up they were dancing and singing. It was one of those little family moments that will always be etched into memory, especially the moment when the little dancing briquettes tumbled to the ground when the bottom of the grill fell out.
I don’t think my dad was ever happier than when faced with a puzzle or a problem. He loved finding a solution.
I’m sort of like that. I love a challenge. I thoroughly enjoy making something of nothing. Some of my happiest years were those when we didn’t have a nickel to our names and our three kids always seemed to be in need of new shoes and a dentist. And the car always needed tires.
Those were challenging years and our house was oddly, but creatively, decorated. I had 500 recipes for hamburger. We were poor but we were gleefully happy. Part of my happiness came from the necessity of being resourceful and creative. Remember when Scarlet O’Hara made the ball gown from the green silk drapes? I was that kind of woman.
It’s a wonderful thing to stretch our minds and come up
with solutions. When a woman I know was pondering with her husband the
easiest way to fix an electrical problem in the house, he, typical male, wanted
to call in an electrician. She, after a bit of practical thinking, said, “Why
don’t we try doing this...” and offered a perfectly ingenious solution. She’s
still walking proud.
Ingenious solutions are harder to come by than simple
solutions. But sometimes they flood our minds with glowing revelation. Maybe
that’s why inventors never quit with just one invention. They have minds that
are constantly whirling and whirring, that continually ponder new devices and
gadgets. My Dad was like that. You could almost hear the wheels turning and he
wrote and plotted continually. Almost every morning there would be a napkin of
doodles next to his empty coffee cup. His shop was filled with tools he’d
adapted for this need or that.
There is that old saying that if you want to find the easiest way to do something, give the task to a lazy man.
There is that old saying that if you want to find the easiest way to do something, give the task to a lazy man.
There should also be a saying that if you want to find
the cheapest way to do something, give the task to a poor man.
I love this story about the government. It took place back in the
days when we were spending oodles of money on the space program. When NASA
first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint
pens wouldn’t work in zero gravity.
It sent the NASA scientists into a dither. This illustrious group spent a decade and $12 billion, ($12 BILLION DOLLARS!), but they eventually developed a pen that would write in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass, and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300° C.
The Russians used a pencil.
https://www.facebook.com/jan.thacker#!/
It sent the NASA scientists into a dither. This illustrious group spent a decade and $12 billion, ($12 BILLION DOLLARS!), but they eventually developed a pen that would write in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass, and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300° C.
The Russians used a pencil.
https://www.facebook.com/jan.thacker#!/
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