This little adventure began in November 2013. I was visiting my in-laws in St. Louis over the Thanksgiving holidays. My father-in-law watches my (then) 2 year old nephew Brock, so as you can imagine, there's tons of toys at grandma and grandpa's house. I found myself sitting there in amazement one day, just looking at all the junk kids have now-a-days. Granted, I had a 6 year old daughter of my own, and by no means am I trying to detract from her junk, but Brock has a lot of stuff. What happened to the days of my childhood when I had to make do with a half-dozen GI Joe's and a shoebox of Matchbox cars? I made do pretty good, because I feel like I used my imagination to make up for my deficit of "stuff." Looking back, I'm thankful I didn't have a lot of stuff. Even today with all the myriad of injection molded plastic toys, there's plenty to be said about a child's need to use their imagination. With the current trends in technology, even games create the imaginative experience for most people. Where's the fun in that?
I digress. As I was sitting in my in-laws home, scanning the mounds of plastic toys, my eye caught something. Something wonderful. Something that hearkened to an earlier day of simplicity and pride in craftsmanship. A wooden truck. Yep....not just a truck, but one of those life changing moments for me. I saw a revitalization of wood toy making in America. I saw the creation of jobs in a hand-crafted toy industry. I saw American timber and organic finishes used to make American toys. I saw the innocence of a child owning a simple toy and leaving the rest to their imagination. One may say that my vision was a bit lofty, but hey, a guy can dream, right?
So after my visions of global wooden toy making domination subsided, I did see a simple shape in the side of Brock's wooden truck. I saw a letter. The letter "B." I supposed that before we made the trek back to St. Louis for Christmas I could "whip up" a race car for Brock. I thought surely any child would like their initial as a race car. My family made the trip back to Mobile and I began to sketch up an idea. The concept of the "B-mobile" was born. Of course, my daughter gave it her kid friendly seal of approval and I began to construct the car. And let me tell ya, I had a blast making that thing! Just me in the garage listening to some K-Love on the radio. I let my imagination run wild with this car....I felt like a little boy playing with only the rough wooden cut out!
Boy I tell ya....Brock sure did love that little car at Christmas! He immediately recognized that it was in the shape of a "B" and set off rolling it around the floor, adding his own race car noises. Pretty much everyone that saw the car really thought it was the coolest. Of course, I was excited, and looking forward to heading home to jump in to my new wood working hobby!
After the Holidays I headed back to work and completely forgot about my new love of toy making.
As I write this page it is December 2014, and I've spent a lot of this year doing some soul searching and focusing on what matters in life. God has opened my eyes to many things in my personal life over the course of this year, so now I'm shifting my attention back to my woodshop....a place of hope...