Public school education mandated a shop class for male students in the elementary schools and so one day I found myself with happy woodworkers toiling with tools and hammers and far from my intellectual capacities. We had to select a project on which we were graded.

I choose a pair of wooden small bookends and went to work planing and sawing like a shop elf. I was allowed to take them home to work on them but truly they were just helpless.

My father came to the rescue and enlisted the help of our neighbor, Mr. Summers who had a basement workshop with all kinds of lathes and tools. This Good Samaritan went to work throwing my pathetic effort into the trash and fashioned a beautiful pair of enameled book ends.

   

The next day I presented the bookends to my shop instructor, a Herr

Rudolph, (given his Swabian background) with a modest smile, as the work of my own since what could I do without any manual skills.

My classmates crowded around once I made my presentation as his large rough working hands seized my work (though made by the affable Mr Summers). Then there was a heart rendering crash as Herr Rudolph tore the bookends apart and threw them into the trash screaming in words that I remember to this day. YOU FOOL IT'S AGAINST THE GRAIN!