Americans donāt seem to be as crafty as they used to be, do they?
Oh, I know, you will say there are plenty who can still be shifty, shady, cunning, sly, slippery-slick, and on-the fly. But thatās not the kind of crafty Iām talking about right now. (After all, I canāt write about politics every week.)
No, Iām talking about the kind of ācraftyā that is preceded by āartsy.ā
And we donāt seem to be that kind of crafty anymore, do we? Not like we used to be.
Decades ago, you couldnāt walk into an American home without bumping into some handmade monstrosity posted in some place of honor for others to admire.
Even my dad ā a no-nonsense steel mill worker whose idea of fine art was a spinnerbait that worked so smoothly that it never twisted his line ā yielded to the mid-century all-American need to scratch that craft itch. I remember him spending hours on a paint-by-numbers masterpiece of a grizzled man in a canoe reaching for his rifle as a bull moose rears on the nearby riverbank, its broad antlers dripping with water. I can still smell the oil paints in their little screw-top pots, wondering how Dad could find the patience to stop each day to let the paint dry so he wouldnāt smear the #4 green leaves into the #6 brown of the mooseās hide.
Mom, too, was a crafty old bird. She would host parties for her lady friends who would bring old 78-rpm records that were too scratched to play on the Victrola, and put them into the oven to melt into odd-shaped potato chip bowls. (If youāre young enough to read that last sentence and recognize only the words āpotato chip,ā call your Grandma. Sheāll explain it to you. Sheāll be so glad to hear from you sheāll probably even make a batch of cookies for you ā from scratch. And set them out to cool on that crafty potholder she wove by hand.)
Later, it was the decoupage craze, in which you took an old copy of Life Magazine and clipped out a breathtaking photo of California redwoods or the crashing Hawaii surf and pasted it to a weathered piece of barnwood, then covered it with a clear goo called Mod Podge, swirling it so it looked like paintbrush strokes when it dried. Or if you were really crafty, maybe you passed up the barnwood and made customized clay flowerpots with pictures of roses or daisies Podged to them.
But how do you display a finely crafted flowerpot? Why, you hang it from a ceiling hook on a macramƩ plant hanger, which you wove from course yarn or jute with your very own crafty fingers. Maybe you even made the pot yourself from colorful ropes of clay that you baked in the oven, still hot from making all those 78-rpm vinyl chip bowls.
If your fingers werenāt that nimble, you could always drain a long-necked Chianti bottle, stand it in the corner and melt candle after candle of multi-hued wax to drip down its neck onto the wicker base. (Of course, maybe the reason your fingers lacked nimbleness was that you drained the bottle a bit too fast. But Iām not judging. Iām just sayinā.)
It was a challenge to pour a glass of wine from those bottles without sending a gush of Chianti across the room before you could convince a long neckful of wine to reverse direction and go back down and in, instead of up and out. But hey, if you graped-up a nice white shirt, you could always resurrect it as a funky-craft tie-die to make it even better than before. Besides, those love-bead necklaces and friendship bracelets you crafted never looked quite right paired with that stodgy white shirt, did they?
And if you had plenty of string left over after crafting bracelets for all your friends, there were always dreamcatchers to be made, or geometric patterns woven around evenly spaced nails on a piece of plywood.
But where are all those good old American crafts today? Is it possible weāre just not as crafty as we used to be?
Oh, I know that a lot of people still make quilts out of old swatches of material left over from time-worn shirts or nostalgic blankets. There are even conventions and a museum honoring the best of the quilting craft in Paducah, Kentucky, that draw thousands of aficionados and other visitors.
And there are still plenty of folks who like to knit, including some in my own family who have given my wife and me treasures that came from their own fingers, like the colorful personalized Christmas stockings we hang each year for Santa to fill.
But still, those crafty folks are pretty few and far between in America these days, not like the huddled masses yearning to be artsy over the years.
So for now, I guess Iāll have to stay close to my one crafty friend who specializes in making his own beer.
Iād tell you his name, but he has only so many bottles heās willing to part with each year, and Iād hate to choke down all those 78-rpm vinyl-flavored chips and have nothing crafty to wash them down with.
