As I talked about in many of my writings my family as a collective had crazy amount of craftsman related skills. Both grandfathers were craftsmen trained by systems pushing specific skills using specific tools. John Armond Davis was not short of being abducted into the WPA (Works Progress Administration), grew up on a farm an hour on the north side of the Okefenokee Swamp in Vidalia, Ga. Their immediate family were dirt farmers, loggers, animal producers, lived off the land, everything in the wild was fair game. After the civil war everybody in the south went into a survivalist mode of life. Grandaddy more than once told me we fed, clothed, sheltered ourselves, made liquor and sat on the porch. Capitalism to us was selling extras at the farmer’s market. He said there was only one race of people, that was poor people, we all depended on each other. Formal education was primal at best. The WPA moved his training into specific skills, most were infrastructure related, roads, waterways, irrigation systems, construction trades, heavy equipment operation and maintenance. He quickly realized the importance of formal communication and taught himself to read, do construction related math and write. My grandfather till the day he died believed that the United States became a superpower on the back of the WPA program. It forced folks to work and learn valuable skills, develop dead areas of the country. Folks learned to live within a structured format of life, they learned to respect a standard of life, be on time, work Mon-Friday, family and church Sat-Sunday, measure quality of life by the knowledge and skills you have, not by the money you have in the bank, expected family structure based on morals and high character. The downside was the government was in control, the premise that you were allowed to flourish if your vision was moral, transparent, society driven. Granddaddy demanded we as a family respected the concept even though most of us had a little swamp in our genes. Frank E S Smith was formally trained in one of Boston’s vocational trade schools. Gramp had several areas of mechanical expertise, sheet metal fabrication, and structural assembly was his primary focus. The vocational /trade school vision was to provide the government support, most chose the civil service path. Gramp said the government always had projects everywhere and politicians would fund them, but they don’t have the desire to work. From a political vision the northeast fueled the idea of how folks should live. The point of origin was Plymouth Rock, the originals defined who was remedial, or challenged and what the challenged needed to know to be productive. The New England crowd were already refined if you listened to them, a spin off from England’s vision of superiority. Gramp loved baseball, traveling the US on vacation with the family. I don’t know if granddaddy ever watched a game until he got a tv, vacation was time to tie up loose ends at your place. Gramp studied history and politics, granddaddy lived through many of the government experiments. Gramp had encyclopedias, hard books on history, sports, and places. Grandaddy read National Geographic and Readers Digest. Two different worlds in one country. My dad’s history, like mine, included absorbing several associated skillsets in the field, perfected by doing it. By the time my dad got to high school he was proficient in several craftsman related skills, drafting, mechanics, carpentry, sign making, farming, primitive food gathering, food preparation, but his want to was drafting, surveying, fast cars and killing anything that lived in the water. After fighting the elements on Cape Canaveral and Merritt Island, he drove a Milk Truck delivering to every grocery store from Daytona to Cocoa Beach, supplemented income frogging, shrimping, fishing, delivering fresh seafood to local restaurants, and surveying. Shortly after my sister was born in 1960 my mom and dad built/ contracted their first house, mom was working in construction business, the experience gave them the opportunity test the waters as a team. My dad and granddaddy later bought a body shop in the early 1960’s. The idea was to manage a successful business. The issue was it took several specific talent/ skills, and this defined a quirk in my dad’s DNA, that if they can do it, I can do it! In this blog I have documented several of our families’ adventures and at every level it required two concepts, what we wanted to know, and what we needed to know! As our group matured dad fueled the concept that knowledge was there for the taking.
