Editorial Note: Working With Touch a Trade
Senior editor Patrick McComb talks about his experience getting into the trades and his upcoming work with an organization looking to help people learn a skill.
It seems that many of my conversations lately have been about one of three subjects: How we’re not building enough houses that people can afford, how our infrastructure is aging and deficient, and how we’re supposed to be making a nationwide switch from fossil fuels to electricity powered by renewables and batteries. All of these things require smart, skilled workers. Unfortunately, we’ve been steering people away from tradework for decades now, and those who are doing it are quickly aging out of the workforce. I know, because I was one of the kids who was talked out of working with my hands at a formative age.
Even as a preteen I had a knack for mechanical things and electrical work. I loved helping my dad work on the house and cars. I played around with model cars, trains and rockets, built tree forts and dug holes for no good reason. I loved my 7th grade shop, sewing and cooking classes, which were requirements for every student. In 9th grade I passed on taking a foreign language and instead took Industrial Arts, an elective, which included a half-year of metal shop and a half-year of wood shop.
This raised some eyebrows among some of my teachers and guidance counselor, owing to my predetermined “college track.” At that time I didn’t like school very much, but I looked forward to my second-period shop classes every day and arranged with my dedicated shop teachers to work before and after school to finish larger projects. In my teen awkwardness, it was the only thing I felt good at.
In my neighborhood, I was surrounded by people who worked on their houses and cars; tended landscapes, vegetable gardens, and fruit trees; and were very tolerant of my curiosity about what they were working on. Sadly a year or two after my graduation in 1989, my school shuttered their shop programs and made kids take computer classes instead of shop, sewing, and cooking.
I have to think my exposure to working with my hands as a kid shaped my future and helped provide me with a career that I love and I think I am pretty good at. Sadly young people aren’t exposed to many of the things I got to see and try. Shop classes are rare and I’m guessing most neighbors aren’t as tolerant of nosy kids asking them about their broken pickup or leach field. Young people also have far more media choices than I did, so they have less incentive to go outside looking for stuff to do.
Many inside and outside the building industry have concerns about the low numbers of people taking up trade craft. More than a year ago, Mason Lord of Hudson Valley Preservation mentioned on the FHB Pro Talk Podcast that he wanted to do something to show young people that working with your hands can be rewarding, even enjoyable.
When I said I’d like to help, I got involved with planning what would become Touch A Trade, the first of which is scheduled for October 22nd in Kent, Conn., at the Connecticut Antique Machinery Association Museum (CAMA). More than a dozen trade and craftspeople are donating their time on a Saturday to show anyone who’s interested how they use their hands to make and fix things. To publicize the event, we had a booth at the annual CAMA Fall Festival where their collection of steam engines and other machinery is on display and running. As you might imagine, the event attracts its fair share of tradespeople and handy people of all types.
Everyone we spoke to at the Fall Festival was supportive of Touch A Trade and thought we as a society need to do more to expose people to the rewards and satisfaction of working with their hands. Often when I hear people taking about tradework, they focus on the money to be made. And yes, that’s true, but I think that misses a more important point. You can love your work, but how do you know you love something if you’ve never been exposed to it? I’m hoping that Touch A Trade can be the spark someone needs to take up work they love.
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