A friend of ours stopped by on Saturday to show off their new car. It was notable for what it didn’t have. No air conditioning, no cup holders, no security system and no windshield wipers. The other thing it didn’t have was a dealer logo because this car was home-made. It was pretty cool; a sleek little two-seater that only needed a flux capacitor to look like it was headed “back to the future”. Now I don’t plan to build a car but it makes me happy to know that engineering minds are busy in garages and basements trying to solve some of our problems without grants or research teams or government loans. They are using everyday tools and everyday ingenuity, things that are not subject to peak anything or political whims.
This got me to thinking about some of the other home-made things I have run across lately. Season extenders for instance. Hot boxes, cold frames and small green houses can all be purchased but I love the ones put together from scraps. With so many people switching to high-efficiency windows, there are hundreds of old storm windows and doors available. The glass is heavy and tempered so the worry about breakage is reduced and using them to grow food is way better than clogging up the landfill or your cellar with.
Every now and then I peruse the Instructables website. I can get lost looking at the plans for duct tape hammocks and tiny cook stoves. Some of the stuff is silly and impractical but there are some gems in there. If nothing else, I get inspired. My mind doesn’t really work in that creative way but I do think that creativity is a muscle and we have to exercise it to make it stronger. I want to challenge myself to get better at this. The next time I’m tempted to throw some money at a problem I will put charge up my creative juices and see what I can come up with.
This is it for today. We are heading off to Connecticut to help Aunt Marge clean out here house. She has two gas stoves with potential to be the centerpiece of my summer kitchen. I suspect that the stoves won’t be the only things that come home with us. I hope to pick up some family history along with old kitchen gadgets and tools. I’ll try to get some pictures posted on Friday.
June 22, 2011 at 6:53 am
That’s good old American ingenuity! We need more of it to get this country up and moving ahead. Have fun at the Auntie’s!
June 22, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Are they allowed to ride it on the road and get it registered? I believe it’s currently illegal in NY (although it used to be common).
June 22, 2011 at 1:06 pm
The local green can dumpsters used to be like 3 miles from our house. It was nice. You had to pass it to go to town. So if I was going to town I would just throw a couple of bags of trash in the truck and go. But in the spring and fall a lot of people clean up there places and set out stuff that other people could use. Anything from plants to plant pots, etc. Or people moving would set stuff there rather than driving 15 miles to town to the thrift stores. One year I decided that I was tired of trying to dig here on our land. The reason is sometime years and years ago someone dug down and put old car bodies in the ground then covered them up. So I started bringing home bathtubs from the dumpsters. And they worked pretty well. But this last week a neighbor that was moving gave us 2 nice size windows. And they fit over the tubs. They make great hot boxes that way. I am pretty excited about it. Plus by using the tubs I can set down and weed when my back is tired.