As far back as I can remember I have been interested in how things are made and I wanted to make stuff myself. I had fun with an erector set I got for Christmas when I was 7 or 8 years old, although I had to wait while my dad and uncle Max played with it.

After that I started putting balsa wood kit model airplanes together, the ones that required cutting all the pieces out with an X-Acto knife. After all the pieces were assembled, they had to be covered with tissue paper and painted with Dope model paint. Unfortunately, the two or three I was most proud of met a disastrous end when my sister Karrie decided to clean my room and stuffed them into my top dresser drawer. Worse yet I was so mad I threw a tantrum and broke the glass in the front of my mom’s small China cabinet. Dumb on both accounts.

Then in the seventh grade, all male students throughout the city had to spend one afternoon a week in their school shop. I guess at that time it was called manual training. The project for the year was for all students to make a model sailboat from the same specifications. Before we could start building we had to learn to draw the plans full-size. Then we were given a couple of pieces of pine, and each week we were introduced to a new tool to use to shape the hull and keel.

We learned to use a hand saw, plane, gouge, and sandpaper. Then we made and attached the deck, shaped the mast, and assembled it with the fishing line rigging and a sail made from a shower curtain that was made by our shop teacher’s wife. To keep the finished boat upright in the water, the shop teacher put a mold around the bottom of the keel and poured it full of lead. We later had to shape the keel with a file. The final step was to paint the finished boat.

At the end of the school year there were two events. First, each school shop teacher had to submit one boat for workmanship judging. Mine was selected and won second place among all students that year. I would have won but I had accidently drilled a hole in the deck for locating the mast in the wrong place, so I improvised and made it into a hatch. At least I got a red ribbon and my picture in the Oregonian newspaper. The second event involved going to the large pool in Westmorland Park and racing our boats. Unfortunately, mine, for reasons unbeknownst to me, didn’t do so well in this competition.

I still have this boat but it is looking a little the worse for wear. I lost the ribbon a few years ago.

In the eighth grade we again had one afternoon of shop class a week. That year we had to make a small table or cabinet, I forget which. I guess this was to acquaint us with this type of construction. After we completed that project, we could choose what we wanted to make the rest of the year. I made a lathe-turned plate from a salvage old maple desktop, a clear acrylic salt and pepper shaker set, and a laminated clear jewelry pendent with colored dye between the laminations.

At the end of the year each shop teacher selected one student-produced item to be displayed in the lobby of the Oregonian. My plate was chosen to represent my school so I once again got some recognition. I gave the plate to my mother and sometime, while in her possession, she attended a toll painting class and painted some flowers on it. She kept it until my parents moved into a retirement facility. I think it ended up in a yard sale when they were moving.

Ken Kaiyala
3-4-23