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In all my many years as a student, one class stands
out as valuable and gratifying, Industrial Arts, in
seventh grade. My teacher was John L. Grannis,
a young man just out of college and newly married.
He worked as a handyman on weekends.
With my parents’ permission, I went along with Mr. Grannis
sometimes on his odd jobs, to hand him tools or to measure
and mark, drill a few holes, pound a few nails. He had more
patience, I thought, than either of my other two main instructors
in the manly manual arts, my father or my Grandpa Grossmann.
More patience, at least, in that first year of teaching. I recall
that my brother Larry, seven years younger than I, told me that
he, too, had John Grannis for seventh-grade shop class. But,
Larry said, rotten young lads had run the poor man ragged by then.
They had made Mr. Grannis nervous and irascible and had caused
him once to shorten a finger—regrettably one of his own—
with a table saw blade. Larry had not personally witnessed the
event, and I have interviewed none of the allegedly rotten boys,
so I speak speculatively when I remark that the good man had
perhaps given a lesson in safety that day as beneficial and
enduring as any he ever gave to me.
♦
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