83: From one of the bags . . .
Little Follies, “The Static of the Spheres,” Chapter 13
13
FROM ONE OF THE BAGS Guppa pulled a couple of the hefty rectangular objects that I had admired at the store.
“Oh, great,” I said. “You got some of those.” I held one in either hand and enjoyed the weight of them. “Thanks, Guppa,” I said, and I gave him a hug. “It’s going to look a lot more solid with a couple of these on it.”
Guppa chuckled and patted me on the head.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Well,” said Guppa, “we have to make a chassis out of this sheet metal.”
Make a chassis out of sheet metal! Wow! I had no idea what a chassis was, but I could see that the sheet metal was, by its very nature—its precise rectangularity, its hardness, its smoothness, the whoomp-whoomp sound it made when I flexed it in my hands—going to be lots of fun to work with.
“I’ll get started on that,” I said. “What do I do?”
Guppa looked at me and tightened his lips. When he spoke, he used the soft voice that he used when he told me that it was time for bed. “Well, Peter, we have some things to do that you don’t know how to do yet. You’ll just have to be patient for a while and watch me. After I show you how to do things, you can try them, okay?”
“Sure!” I said. It seemed like a fair enough deal to me. I wanted to work on the radio, of course, but I didn’t want the results marred by the sloppy sort of work that an untrained kid like me would produce.
Guppa began fabricating the chassis. It turned out to be even more fun than I had imagined. It involved lots of sawing with a hacksaw that went scree-scree through the metal, sending thrilling chills up and down our spines, plenty of whanging and banging at the metal while it was clamped in a vise, a good deal of drilling with Guppa’s hefty electric drill, which squealed through the metal and threw bright, sharp-edged helixes all over the workbench and onto the floor, and quite a bit of cursing, mostly under the breath, but occasionally loud enough to bring Gumma to the cellar door to call out, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Herb?”
It also involved some sweeping up, and that’s what I did.
[to be continued on Tuesday, September 7, 2021]
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
In Topical Guide 83, Mark Dorset considers Gadgets, Electronic from this episode.
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