BANGARANG! Lost Boys Grow Meat in the Ground

by Todd Walker

I couldn’t believe what a student told me in Science class a few years back!

Other research shows that working with our hands makes our brain happy. Cutting tree bark, boring holes with an awl, and stitching sides to make a berry basket develops dexterity, a physical skill lacking in our smart-phone culture. Looking at an actual physical thing you created with your hands has rewards beyond the crafted item. The importance is not so much the product but the active practice and engagement.

Junior high shop class supplemented the hands-on education I caught from helping my daddy in his plumbing and welding business. I use the term “caught” since that’s how Daddy passed on his trade skills. Mr. Johnson, our shop teacher, taught us how to use all the cool power tools in that dusty cinderblock classroom. And we made stuff, some of which I still have to this day. No bloody fingers were left on the table of that monstrous radial arm saw either. Helicopter parenting was not a thing during the Nixon Administration.

The tree stump in front of our single-wide trailer must have had a coffee can of nails sunk into it. I’d sit there and smash steel, and my thumb occasionally, into wood grain like it was my job. I was 8 or 9 at the time and content to “waste” nails. The repetitions served me well on a few tree houses in my youth, and the subfloor in our new house Daddy built in 1975.

There are still Lost Boys out there shouting BANGARANG!, out of touch with the real world. There was, and I still have hope that there can be, a generation of boys and girls who fixed their own flat bike tires, carried pocket knives to the woods, picked rows of butter beans, and were content to be swallowed up by nature.

What if we could grow bacon on vines? I digress.

Keep Doing the Stuff of Self-Reliance,

~ Todd

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