How things are made and done

Right now I'm reading a book entitled Road of 10,000 Pains:  The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Div. by the U.S. Marines, 1967.  I read a lot of military history.  I still don't have enough books on the Vietnam War, but a friend lent me his copy and I'm thoroughly engrossed in this one.

As with virtually any history of the war in 'Nam, rice paddies are mentioned liberally.  Apropos of nothing, I stopped and wondered, as I always do, how rice paddies work.  That is, how are they planted but, more curiously for me, how are they harvested.  This is how my brain works.

I am enormously curious about things.  Perhaps it's not macho to admit, but there is a lot about a lot that I simply don't know.  For someone supposedly as educated as me, that may come as a surprising comment, but I've always maintained that my studies have shown me just how much I don't know.  Like how rice is harvested.

Cable television is scorned, with good reason, for its myriad bad shows,  There is more vapidity, more inanity, more emptiness on basic cable television at which one can shake a stick.  But for all that vacuous programming, there is also a lot of very interesting stuff on as well.  The Discovery Channel. the National Geographic Channel and some other channels offer really informative and educational stuff.  I can sit transfixed watching a show on the animal kingdom or, I believe on the Discovery Channel, a show where they show how things are made.

I remember one episode where they showed how modern hockey sticks are made.  I had thought -- and back in the day they probably were -- that hockey sticks were made of wood.  Now, they are made of a composite substance that begins as a sheet of material that's molded around shafts and then heated to make the composite adhere to itself as it's wound around the shaft mold multiple times.

I've seen how whiskey is distilled.  I've watched baseball bats made.  I could sit there for hours and watch any of these things.  I don't need car crashes or sex scenes of shoot-em-ups to enjoy what I'm watching.

One would think that with this innate curiosity I'd be more mechanically inclined.  If I had ample amounts of time and stuff that I could work on cost-free I'd tinker for hours.  I've never had that luxury.  It would also be nice to have someone with infinite patience who could guide me and explain how things work.  I've never had that.  In fact, I had quite the opposite.  I'm not stupid, just untutored.

For now, though, I'll just keep watching these shows, fascinated what God's gift of ingenuity has allowed man to figure out.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles