Those were the two major items that my son Tom asked “Santa” for this Christmas. We…I mean he, happily filled that request and he’s been building garages, bridges, workshops, and other structures ever since. Sometimes he calls us in to inspect his work and other times he’s just so wrapped up in it that he builds and plays right up until bed time and gets back to it after school the next day. It kind of blew our minds when he made up his Christmas list and those two things were at the top. The Camaro wasn’t much of a shocker as we’ve got cars of all shapes and sizes rolling around the floor at all hours here at BS eastern world HQ. This isn’t a rant about how great of parents we are because the kid plays with blocks instead of shoot ’em up video games. It is more about how fun it has been watching him enjoy one of life’s great pleasures, the personal victory.

Hot rodding and sportsman racing can be a fairly lonesome activities. Lots of times it is just us and our car in the garage, pits, driveway, or dirt. No one sees the first time we rebuild a carb and it doesn’t barf fuel everywhere or the first time we roll the key over and hear an engine that we’ve bled over, lost sleep over, scraped up every last cent to pay for, or have dreamed about building for years. I don’t see the moment that Tom stacks the last block on top of whatever he’s building, but I do see the finish product when I get the, “Hey dad!” call from the other room. It is the kid equivalent of rolling into the first cruise night with your newly finished (or newly operable) project. He’s feeling those same feelings we do. Personal victories and pride.

The current state of the world devalues pride a lot. We’re barraged with ads for services that promise to handle all of our needs with “professionals” and “experts” that’ll do stuff far better than us feeble minded regular folks could ever hope to. What the hell happened?

I have a ton of old issues of Popular Mechanics circa the late 1950s and early 1960s that came from my late grandfather’s house and those things are dripping with pride. Whole magazines filled with plans on how to build stuff, how to fix stuff. Ads for lathes and mills and machines that you just don’t see on those pages anymore. The idea then was to BE the expert, to LEARN the skill, to DO the job yourself. Hot rodding and sportsman racing still hold these ideals pretty high in my estimation. We celebrate the dude who builds the crazy car in his garage with his hands and help from buddies. We elevate the Bill Caswells of the world that just go out there and figure out how to do it on the fly.

Tom doesn’t know it yet, but those structures he’s building and knocking over are a lot more than little block buildings. Each time he finishes one and takes time to look at it, he’s learning how good it feels to create something or mend something with his own two hands. The corners may be a little cockeyed and the structural engineering may not be 100% sound but like with cars, I’ll take a not-so-perfect home built rig over some super car that a fat check delivered to the owner’s door. I hope he feels the same way when he’s my age.I’m not sure Tom totally understands Buford T Justice or what he calls, “the police car project” yet, but he will.

My blocks are just a hell of a lot bigger than his.