DIYing; An American Legacy
Fitzpatrick-It’s the American way to do things ourselves. Back in the frontier days, we enjoyed sparse population, sparse materials and even sparser skills. Think about it. If you were a skilled tradesperson in Europe, baring religious or racial persecution, famine or disease, you belonged to a guild and earned the same decent living for yourself and your family that your ancestors made before you. In other words, them that done come here was basically unskilled.
So there you are on your homestead and you need to build your house. You are all you have, besides perhaps some strapping lads from the next township. I read a fascinating article in Harpers last spring about a man who collects antique farm implements and writes about such. He noted that the quality of American-made tools, even the old ones, never matched the Europeans’, because we didn’t have the benefit of centuries of the guild systems; whereby literally ten to twenty generations of the same family would work the same trade. Imagine what those guys know about their craft.
And what the average DIYer doesn’t.
So there you are on your homestead and you need to build your house. You are all you have, besides perhaps some strapping lads from the next township. I read a fascinating article in Harpers last spring about a man who collects antique farm implements and writes about such. He noted that the quality of American-made tools, even the old ones, never matched the Europeans’, because we didn’t have the benefit of centuries of the guild systems; whereby literally ten to twenty generations of the same family would work the same trade. Imagine what those guys know about their craft.
And what the average DIYer doesn’t.
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