welder, computer engineer, authenticator of antiquities
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Older example:
When my dad was 15, WWII had begun.? He went on a motorcycle from Rotan, Texas to Oakland, California to work in the shipyards.? He learned to use a rivet machine, and he also learned to weld.? He joined the army at 17, with parental permission, and arrived in France a few days after the war ended in Europe, so he was there for a couple of years, mostly in Germany.? "The occupation (of Germany)."? In the army, he fixed jeeps and trucks, and taught people to drive them.? He had not learned any of that in school.? In his later years he was, professionally, a welder.
In the 1960s I was a kid.? My dad was a welder, but many of my friends' dads worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working with computers.? One of the dads was a machinist (making metal parts as they needed to be made).? I don't know where he learned that.? But everyone working with computers in those days learned it from having repaired radios and TVs, and then learning more on the job, because even universities didn't know anything about computers. :-)? ?Even in the early 1970s when I was at the University of New Mexico, classes involving computer science used punch cards, read by one big mainframe.? All the "computers" in offices and such were remotely connected to "the computer" which took a building of its own.??
A friend my age did art, from childhood.? When other kids made a snowman, he made a dinosaur, or a seal holding a big snowball on its nose.? He went through several media, in series, making each friend a gift and then abandoning forever that beading, glasswork, wooden-box-carving, or whatever it had been.? Finished forever; no repairs; moved on.? He collected road kill, and painted beautiful paintings of birds alive, with fine details he could only get by having the feathers where he could touch them, and the tails where he could spread them out. He procured an antique dentists' drill, with a foot-pedal driving the gears, so he could go fast or slow, with the drill.? With that, he started carving.? He made some wax seals for me and my friends, of our medieval arms.? A duck had feathers; a bear had fur, and claws.? So tiny.? ?He started doing 3-D carvings in stone and shell.? Heishi necklaces with beads he made himself, with holes drilled with that dentists' drill.? Little animals not an inch long, with details.? He was selling them in shops on the Santa Fe plaza, to wealthy tourists.
Continuation of that friend, skipping a few years:? He authenticates antiques for money, now that he's older.? He knows from personal experience the microscopic differences between hand tools and power tools (and that in-between, of band-powered or gear-powered, but not as fast as electric tools).? He has contracts with several museums, I heard recently.? He specializes in Chinese jade, or at least that's his favorite thing, partly because he learned Chinese after he went from Tai Chi in his 20s to Chinese stick fighting, and that led to Chinese muscle liniments which he started brewing himself, and then other Chinese medicine production.??
We had gone to school together in some of Jr. High and high school.? He went to Creighton planning to become a doctor, but dropped out and ended up doing more and more art (and Chinese martial all-kinds-of-stuff, some of which he taught, for money, for years).
People younger than I am, I don't have as much knowledge, honestly, and maybe because "made a living" needs to operate for a few years to be certain. :-)
Sandra
Sandra Dodd