A Long Line of Makers

I was thinking of my father and this father's day. I remembered that he did a lot of making things when he was young. I have on my dresser, one of the lead soldiers that he made when he was a child. He had molds, he melted the lead and poured his own toys. As a child, I played with them, setting them up and shooting them down with a popgun that my grandfather found corks for. The corks were too big and he had to trim them down.

The concept of dealing with melting and cooking things to create toys was a part of my own childhood. I had a Mattel "Thingmaker" when I was young. I put liquid plastic into a mold, put the mold onto a heating element and cooked the plastic into either monsters, or flowers, or Peanuts characters. There was a risk of getting burned, and I probably did, though I don't remember it. I never owned an Easy-Bake oven, but my best friend, Becky, did.

So, not only did I grow up making things, so did my father before me.