ShopSmith

Back in '59 or thereabouts, my father traded in his golf clubs for a ShopSmith Mark 1.  (Update: some checking revealed that our ShopSmith is actually a prototype, an even more basic and even more dangerous device than the Mark 1.)  Now, there's two things that strike me about this fact - First, that he believed that golf, and the associated society, was not essential to the advancement of a NASA research pilot, even in 1959.  This does not surprise anyone.  Second, that this machine, which he used for decades to make furniture for our family, was nearly as dangerous as the planes he was flying*.  At least, it was dangerous to me, his first-born son.  I almost lost fingers in the drive belt, and almost suffered from a ... penetrating head wound ... a few years later.  (The lathe chisel, a finely sharpened piece of tool steel about 12 inches long, with a nice ten-inch wood grip, went straight up, thus missing my face by at least four inches.  I don't think it went more than 15 feet in the air.)

The thing had an exposed drive belt, with the upper pulley placed right where a bystander might rest a hand in a stupid attempt to stop the blade.  There were no blade-guards, pulley covers, automatic brakes, or safeties of any kind.  Totally lethal.

On the other hand, it was easy to learn and use, extremely capable, if not terribly precise, and I still lust for it.

In the 60's, at the same time I was using the ShopSmith to make all kinds of hobbiest bits and pieces, we (the neighbor kid and I) were also roaming the area on bikes, totally out of parental control.  No cellphones, of course, but I don't think I ever even used a payphone to call home (except for that one time in the Santa Cruz mountains when I ran out of energy about sunset).  HW and I used to flip a coin at each major intersection, unless we had a pre-planned destination (like the Hellyer Park velodrome, about 15 miles one-way).  We'd be out all day, with no more leave-taking than 'Bye, be back around dinner time.'

My brother was making illegal brandy in the garage, and later exploding propane gas balloons above night games at our high school.  All good fun, of course.

Many years later, I had a teen-age daughter.  (How do these things happen?  I think no one really knows. Cf. 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Chapter 1)  Years earlier, I used to joke with the other dads at the school that I was going to solve the looming teen-age boy issue by teaching her to use a shotgun, and making sure this fact was well-known.  Turns out I didn't need to actually do that (good thing, too, since I don't know anything about shotguns and would probably have blown off my own hand "teaching" her.)  She made a suit of armor which she wore to her high school's freshman 'hazing' day, and evinced a notable (and public) interest in 'pointy, clangy' things - swords, Naginata, etc.  Problem solved... (Well, for a while, anyway.  It's been out of my hands for some time.)

My son is into golf and math.  On the other hand, he can out-ski me on any double-black slope.  He's better than me at math, too.  Perhaps we have done OK as parents after all, even with the reduced risk of death that's so prevalent these days.

* Apparently this machine was so notorious, it was responsible for the California Supreme Court's version of Strict Liability, back in '63.