Sawdustbybillyo

I am retired from a long life involving many differrent aspects of living a great life. I was born and raised on a farm/ranch in Northern Arizona and attended Flagstaff High School.  I joined the US Air Force where I was trained as an Aircraft and Engine mechanic before being shipped to Okinawa aboard the USS Missouri where I spent the next two years working on B-29 Bombers. We were bombing North Korea almost every night and maintaining the B-29s all day. After returning to the States and being discharged, I met the most beautiful girl I had eveer seen and vowed I was going to make her my wife. Within the year, we were married and that was fifty five years ago. I drove trucks, helped build the Glen Canyon Dam in Northern Arizona, Was a City Policeman in Flagstaff, An Arizona Highway Patrolman, the Constable for East Yavapai County, drove school buses for Cottonwoood High and Middle school and sold Real Estate for Century Twenty One. This is just a short list of my many jobs. This brings me to my retirement years for which I made preparations by setting up a complete wood shop before retiring so I couold prusue my hobbies of building all different types of items out of wood and thereby making alot of sawdust. I have spent a lot of time out looking in trees for limbs shaped like walking canes. I cut them in the rough, bring them to my shop and do the finish work to make them into finished walking canes. I have given canes to over thirty people who need assistants in walking. This was taught to me by an old man who worked for my dad on the ranch many years ago. He also taught me to whittle many different things, one of them being a ball in a cage on a series of connected chain links all made from a single piece of wood. I have made many of these in all different lengths. My most recent items consist of making small carousels, merry go rounds and a ferris wheel. The merry go rounds and carousels have an excentric in them which makes them move in and out or up and down to make them more realistic. The ferris wheel has seats which swing freely as the wheel turns.  Lately I have been making models of the farm machinery we had on the farm/ranch beginning with the tractors.  The first one had steel wheels with iron lugs but was changed to rubber tires a little later. I have built models of  the plow used to start the preperarion of the ground, then the harrow to break up the clods, then the planter to plant the seeds and and then of course the crops had to cultivated through the growing season and then the wagons to haul the crops to the stationary thrasher for thrashing the crops.  I made a dragon for a friend and then some others just because I could do the design and all.  I have been invited to show some of my stuff in the Made in Clarkdale Art Show in December. I am going to participate in the Clemmensaw Museum Old Settlers Day by deminstrating how to "without any modern convienences.