My life has been all over the map. I was poor as a church mouse as a kid and started designing and building things I couldn't have. Never stopped. I taught myself trigonometry from an old textbook I got at Goodwill for 10 cents. I was 9 years old at the time. I took my dad's tools (he was a carpenter) some scrap from a heap and built myself a workable transit. I ended up getting a Masters in Chemical Engineering with a Minor in Math. Always liked woodworking due to going to jobsites and staying all day with my Dad when I was 4 years old. Ended up working with him on construction jobs until I started college. When I got married I built most of the furniture for our first house. I built our first three homes myself on nights and weekends.
By my count, I have owned over 100 cars in my life. Aside from daily drivers they were mostly sports cars and European cars. Most were oddities such as a first year Opal GT with a tiny 1100 engine. Only rule was they had to be interesting. I didn't collect much, just bought, fixed up, drove and sold. My only keeper was an MGA MK II 1962, which was very nearly the last A made. I did a frame up restoration, twice, down to the last nut bolt, and did all the work myself except for paint. Kept it over 40 years.
Always into photography, I moved into large format landscape for years (Ansel Adams and Group f/64 junkie). Winning several national awards and a State Fair exhibition led to a little commercial work (calendars and business building decoration). In keeping with the making theme I built a couple of cutting edge modern view cameras that worked well.
Always liked string instruments and built my first one for my future wife while in college. She appeared in a yearly mountain music festival with original instruments and I built her a dulcimer before the craze for roots music was really a big thing. She used it to perform at a travel convention show in the fairground stadium in Louisville before 11000 people. Later my Dad started making the design and sold them through craft fairs. Over the years I made guitars, fiddles, dobroes, mandolins, bazoukis, wooden percussion instruments etc. I also got into buying and rebuilding vintage instruments. The favorite guitar I own is a 1931 Martin 12 fret O-17 with bar frets. Bought it as a wreck, took it apart and rebuilt it with original parts. Most people think it is the sweetest sounding finger picking machine they have ever played.
I was drawn early to fishing and hunting and became interested in boats. I have owned a boat of some kind continuously for over 60 years. Our most active period was the 10 years we owned a home on the Florida panhandle. We kept a bay boat in a dry facility all that time and fished the region constantly when we were there. Our fishing log showed that we boated 38 different species during that time. I also built a number of boats during the time including canoes, prams and small sailboats. I was a fly fisherman since young and built a lot of my tackle.
Firearms early became my everlasting hobby. I have bought an sold at least hundreds of guns in my life. Trained myself to do about anything I needed on one. Strangely enough, the three areas I always loved were double shotguns, extreme accuracy rigs (mostly smallbore) and large caliber dangerous game guns. I built more than half of the rifles I owned and a lot of those were wildcat rounds simply because of the interest. When I was building a lot, I bought a pantograph to save money (and mostly time) in the stock making. I built a lot of medium and large bore rifles in the prewar English style. Late in life (after I was 65) I finally started shooting some benchrest. I confined it to rimfire and started shooting an organized version of autoloading BR. I built 8 or 10 rifles over a year and ended up winning 3 National Championships and several State Championships in three years with rifles I built. The three Nationals were in three different categories. I don't shoot so much due to the strain of travelling all over the eastern US for a lot of three years. I now mostly collect and again the dominant theme is "interesting" although I have been gravitating almost exclusively to the 1850-1900 era.
I have other interests but draw short of calling them hobbies. I have played golf off and on over my life but spent a lot of that time supporting both my daughters when they were in High School golf. I built most of their clubs and any that the boys team members wanted to try. I am now following my only grandson who is a whiz on their middle school team. He shoots par from the 5200 yard tees and a 6th grade 11 year old. We are going to Pinehearst for a tournament over Thanksgiving.
I retired when I was 57, I retired on the same day that my wife qualified in her Federal job. Everyone I talked to asked me if I thought I would be bored after I retired. I couldn't believe they were asking me that. I had been looking forward to it for years. We had just sold my wife's 300 acre farm, but after 10 years of retirement, we ended up buying two more.
If you stay busy doing things you like, you will never be bored.
Last edited by AGS; 11/21/24 12:16 PM.
