January 26, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

When most schools still taught workshop, it was not only a 30-40 minute break from traditional learning and sitting at a desk, but it was a chance to acquire skills that for many have proved useful in home ownership, in the satisfaction of building something.

The tools and machines alone in well-equipped school shops were a treat, and whatever you made – a cowboy tie rack, lamp, etc. – had your mom bursting with enough pride that however rough the piece, she put it on display.

In the sixth grade at the North Main Street School, Spring Valley, N.Y., my shop class was just before lunch. My father made sandwiches for my brother Craig and me, usually swiss cheese, and to this day I cannot chomp on such delight without equating the great scent of cut pine from wood shop as I held the sandwich.

And there is another connection: My dad went to Spring Valley High, as did his sons, but in his 1930s day, boys and girls could take as electives shop and home economics. He took both, and the cooking and sewing skills were later well-used to help my mother in a two-worker family. A swiss cheese sandwich connection.

Other life skills were taught in school: arithmetic, budgeting, household organization, basics that brought us dexterity and efficiency.

Some schools still offer such programs, though usually as “family/consumer science” and in competition with marketable, higher-education skills. Some rue that move, others believe shop and home economics courses are “trivial.”

Not to have any debate here, just to report personally that whenever I make furniture or repair the house and am tempted to cut corners, Eugene Carroll, my shop teacher, is breathing down my neck, thank you. And fresh-cut pine makes my mouth water for my father’s swiss cheese sandwich – every time.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

-30-