I spent the last three weeks visiting my North Dakota family and my Dad-who is on hospice care. During the visit I did a walk through the "Old Shop" that was built in 1973 and was the beginning of the Family Business. Many changes have since taken place in the business. This is my reminiscence on this old building.
What a remarkable family story you've told here, and how fortunate you were to grow up in that creative cauldron you call the Shop. No wonder you've inherited your father's passion for production and hard work. Thank you for filling us in on this formative period in your life.
This tribute is one of the coolest things I have read in a while. Very well done and heart warming. I wish you all peace and blessings, most especially your father.
I’ve hung more than a few sheets of drywall on ceilings in my life. Long ago, I heard of the Panel Lift, but never had a large enough drywall hanging job to justify buying or renting one, since I was mainly a painter. But I sure have recommended the device to many a DIY-er when they told me of their plans to drywall a room or two. I never would have imagined that here I hang out on a forum with the inventor’s son.
Your tribute is a wonderful way to honor your father. Thank you for sharing!
Nice Alan, it is very similar to my up bringing. My Dad and myself and 2 brothers worked together after school and weekends. We worked for people near us doing electrical, plumbing, small engine repair, appliance repair and auto body shop repairing wrecks and painting. In our spare time we also farmed!
Cool to know of the person who invented one of the best labor saving devices I've used.
The following text resonated with me:
"But working in this shop also allowed us to be alone. Alone at long tedious tasks producing parts that stacked into boxes, carts and assembly racks. We learned The Value of tedium-The Value of monotony-The Value of being uncomfortable while your body did work and your mind was free -or forced to drift elsewhere.
I see this Emptiness now as I walked through the dimly lit rooms of the Old Shop. Once the Heart of the operation, it is now a shell.
What ever one’s work environment may be, I think there is a forlornness unmatched by people whose hands helped to build the place they work. I think of farmers and their families who through the generations have managed the same homesteads as they built barns and granaries, sheds and facilities to run their operations. Now-as corporate farms take over the landscape- these farmers and their families are faced with the declining ability to keep pace and are losing their businesses-But more to the heart-they are losing their land and buildings-A loss that is different than moving from a cubicle to another cubicle, a company to another company-even moving from one career to a different career. When your body has contributed to the means by which an enterprise has been planted, grown and flourished, and now that enterprise has lost those means to be maintained-there is an Emptiness."
What a terrific eulogy, I always enjoyed your posts of you and your father working together, I wish I could have spent more time working with my father but he passed at a young age.