This is the actual cookie cutter I made in the 7th grade in Jr. High. It hangs on a nail in our kitchen.
My mother saved this little piece of tin. It's just a cookie cutter
I made myself in
metal shop in the second half of 7th grade in Fels Jr. High. I think
it took a week or two of double 45 minute periods and 10 cents of "shop
dues" to make it. Actually it was a series of three or four we made. The
first "project" was a rooster card holder to hold the 3"x 5" card with
our class schedule on it. Much simpler. No solder.
It's pathetic...there are so many defects, I would give it a C- if I
was the metal shop teacher.
I could do better now, but I have 44 years of experience at this point
and a Bernz-o-matic Torch instead of bulky hand held soldering irons we heated
in gas fired furnaces on top of the work benches.
It hangs on our kitchen wall on a nail with the other odds and ends
my wife collects.
Relicts of days gone bye. Sock forms, choppers, curling irons heated
on the open flame of the stove, an egg beater mixer given to my mother
by my Uncle Arnold as a shower present when she married my father, a rolling
pin the paint worn off the handles.
I use the cookie cutter every now and then in order to maintain the rule: Use it every 5 years or out in the trash it goes.
I don't know what happened to the other "shop projects" I made at Fels,
but when I moved in with Debbie in her house in Glenside, there was a "broom
holder". She didn't know what it was, but I recognized it immediately.
In fact, when I was a substitute teacher in Philadelphia in the mid '70's
and was assigned to the wood shop at Fels Jr. High School, I discovered
a stack of mounted blue prints and took one of the broom holder and one
of the tie rack. The tie rack I made was painted blue and I gave it to
my father who rarely wore ties...after all he worked seven days a week in
the hardware store and wore his gray uniform with "Bernie" embroidered
in script on a patch over his heart. The broom holder is now screwed to
the wall outside our second floor Victorian porch and proudly holds a broom
upside down like a flag.
Bernie
Today, the kids in Jr. High School make virtual projects never smelling the freshly cut wood or paint. Instead they surf the internet for information and cut and paste words and pictures...someone else's work and never have the opportunity to shape metal and wood into something useful, exposing their true selves in their craftsmanship of a finished, useful item. Now, if they want to give Mom a cookie cookie, they go the the mall where things magically appear sealed in plastic, with a bar code, stamped made in China, hung on a peg board hook and sold for a couple of bucks.
See an explanation about Industrial Arts Education.
Elliott Hirsh
November '01