Reflections by Doc Arnett

I cannot remember when I did not enjoy working with my hands. Wait a minute… actually I can remember several occasions when I did not enjoy working with my hands: suckering tobacco, shoveling fresh manure off the floor of the milk shed, cleaning out a grease pit behind Hansford Doron’s house in Browns Grove, etc, et al, ad infinitum… But setting aside such exceptions, I can say with clear conscience and accurate recollection that I have found special pleasure in working with my hands for as back as I can remember.

Playing with building blocks and Lincoln Logs, tinkering around with the leftovers from my oldest brother’s erector set, stacking up boards and pieces of posts out by the garage. My brother Paul and I spent hours building tunnels and forts with bales of alfalfa up in the big hay loft of the stock barn on our farm in Todd County. I think I was all of seven years old the first time I “helped” put up Sheetrock. Those short, sturdy nails were perfect for a kid’s hammering. The paper coated face of the drywall sheets—uhm, not so much.

As I got older, Dad showed me how to extend my building skills a bit, especially with pouring concrete, rough framing, and roofing. When I was sixteen, he arranged for my first professional house-painting jobs: doing two rental houses for my cousin LaVira Mitchell in Paducah. Some experiences were more formal.

Classes I took as part of my Industrial Education curriculum at Murray State University extended my experience to include welding, sheet metal work, machining, woodworking, furniture design and construction, basic electronics, lathe turning, leather work, shaping thermoplastics, fiberglass, working with various crafts materials, and other related skills. The classes most beneficial to my cabinet making, carpentry, and general construction were the drafting classes; that’s where I learned basic layout and measurement.

Through the years, I added a nighttime vocational course or two in electrical work taught by my high school biology teacher and guitar instructor, Richard Adams. Mostly by reluctant experience and urgent need, I learned to do basic plumbing. I eventually acquainted myself with masonry work using brick, block, and natural stone.

My skill level at these various efforts has varied from barely functional to fairly accomplished. My first efforts with drywall finishing were absolutely embarrassing and disappointing. Eventually, though, I got to where I could do a passable job of it.

Many of my projects and associated learning experiences were motivated by the intersection of strong desire and very limited funding. The plumbing and electrical efforts have saved us thousands of dollars over the years. For that matter, all of them have made it possible for us to make dramatic improvements in the houses we lived in. Things that we could never have afforded to hire others to do we did ourselves.

One thing that has remained constant over these decades is the satisfaction of having made something, of having shaped materials into something new, something improved, something that did not exist before. Whether a simple wooden toy, an entire set of kitchen cabinets, a new room built onto a house, or a small jewelry box for a grandchild, I find a deep satisfaction in both process and product. I believe that this creative impulse, this desire to make things and to make things better, is set into the core sense and structure of human nature. It is part and parcel of who we are. A strong stamp set into our substance by the One Who Made Us.

Though I cannot fathom the depth of satisfaction, the extent of accomplishment, or the magnitude of effort and engineering that he would have experienced, I think I have at least a faint glimmering of what our Creator felt at the conclusion of the sixth day, “Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!” (Genesis 1:31)

I am quite sure I understand the beauty of what he did on the seventh day!