Q1: Tell us what your ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’ might show you
I was 12 when I think I made the first thing I can remember that was
- From my own head (not a commercial thing like a shrinky dink or plastic model)
- Planned out (not cobbled together from a whim)
- 3-D (not a drawing or painting, etc.)
It was a castle for my younger brother, for our action figures.
With six kids, we had an assigned sibling for gifts every year--still do, in fact, 40+ years later. I had my first or second (?) job, cleaning the facility across the street in the small, unfriendly Montana town we had just moved to. The facility was part laundromat and part workshop for people with cognitive and physical disabillities. I was the 12-year-old janitor, coming in for an hour or two at night, sweeping, emptying trash, etc.
They gave me permission to use the wood shop on site. I got some plywood (3/4 inch, I think) from... somewhere. I cut a 2x3-foot base, then assembled a rectangle of 1-foot-high walls rising from that, and with a scroll saw or something similar cut in some ramparts around the top rim. I might have made some kind of decorative posts on the corners; don't remember. I used strips of wood screwed and glued in an inch below the ramparts, all around, for action figures to stand. There was a ramp at one part, I think, for them to climb up to the top of the wall and back down. I cut a front door and made a drawbridge-type gate with little ropes or chains (hard to remember) and some kind of latch to keep it closed. I painted it white.
He liked it. We played with GI Joe, Fisher Price, and other action figures in that castle for the remaining years of our childhood and early adolescence. I remember the shame and worry of getting many little things wrong and leaving marks where I shouldn't, over-cuts, etc., but I also remember the happiness as I slowly realized he liked it, and so did my other brothers. My dad, never one for praising me much in areas where he excelled (and he was great at building things) might have even said something positive about it.
This would have been maybe 1981, one of the worst years of my life in that shithole of a town that could have been quaint and beautiful if the people weren't such dicks. We lived there four years before finally leaving for the Pacific Northwest, where everyone was much happier except my father, who lost a job in his field and ended up working at a mind-numbingly boring position for 20 more years.
I wish I had a photo of that castle. It's the first thing I created besides 2-D art that I was proud of.
#MakersHour
