Get yourself a wooden bucket and USE it

We just spent a wonderful week in Mountain View Arkansas taking a tinsmithing class at the folk center.  Our teacher was Robert Stone.   He was awesome.  It was a crazy week.   We got up at 5:30 every morning and drove to the center.  We arrived at 9 and worked till 6 with an hour for lunch.   Then we drove back to my folks’ house where we were staying.  We were exhausted by the end, but it was all worth it.   Then you get to come home to our home.  Home to  bills, the job, the planning commission, and all the new ordinances the city council has imposed upon us since we left.  When you spend a week in a place where creativity and artisanship is appreciated and encouraged and embraced, its hard to come back to Fort Smith… the opposite.   I had written an entire blog about that, but I deleted it… I would rather focus on the positive and save my rant for the next politician that stops by my house.

Back to my happy place.   Tinsmithing is truly a dying art.   The machinery we worked on was from the mid 1800’s.   You can sometimes find modern equipment, but it doesn’t quite perform the same job.  I also learned that the first tinsmith shop in America was started by two Irish brothers in 1740.  We made sconces and cups and cookie cutters and all sorts of things.   It was great to use the hand-crank machinery and think about all the people who used it over the years before me.  Anyone who knows me, knows I am a hand-crank addict.  

My mother asked me an interesting question.   Do you think we have it better now or did we have it better then?  Not living in that other time, I can only assume.   MY answer?  Then.  This is why.  I truly appreciate craftsmanship.   Back then, you had one of something and you made it last.  You appreciated the effort it took to make it because you often had to trade something hard-earned for it.  I really admired the coopers buckets and it got me to thinking.  Today, if I want a bucket, I run to the Home Depot and I buy a bucket.  I buy a cheap, plastic disposable bucket.  Made in God only knows where.  I use it and I set it outside and eventually it finds its way to the landfill.  Now back then, I buy a wooden coopered bucket.  That is the bucket and it will have to last.   There would have been no running back to the store for another bucket.   Point being, you HAD to appreciate things more. 

I think that is what this disposable society is missing.   I figure in a hundred years or so, there will be no trace of this generation, other than the damage to the environment.   When people go to an antique store in the future, what will they find?   McDonald’s Collector glasses from China?  Will there even be an antique store?  Will we have anything worth preserving?  This is what I am going to do about it.   I am going to buy myself a wooden bucket and I am going to USE it.  I am going to make my own cookie cutters.  I am going to learn to be completely self sufficient from the “made in China” stores and I am going to teach others to do the same.  The thought of not needing a Wal-Mart is enticing isn’t it?   I am in the process of removing mass produced items from my house (unless they are American made).  I would rather have one wooden bucket than 5 plastic ones sitting in my back yard.  We need to get rid of our excess and go back to appreciating smaller quantities. 

Now I will get off my soap box.  And while I’m off, I might learn to make some soap J