7: The Makers

There is a quote on some of our t-shirts.  It is a fragment of a sentence Barack Obama said during his inauguration. The t-shirts say:

"...the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things."

 This describes us and we are proud to be those people.  We craft.  We drill, cut, weld, design, envision, and build.  We are the makers of things.

We are at the Maker Faire, a gathering of the diversity of silicon valley geekdom.  This is our Ritual.  This is our Sabbath.  This is our Woodstock.

Our tribe gathers and we are at once one and the same.  A collection of strange faces we recognize immediately.  The creators of things both useful and abstract.  The doers of stuff most people don't get, that the rest of us admire and covet.

Machines that transport us via pedal, steam,  fire, explosion.  Computers that reproduce Michelangelo on egg shells.   Comic book rockets the size of buildings that fly to every planet in our imagination.

People who love us ask us "why?"

We thought you knew by now.  When you caught us tearing apart the TV with rusty pliers and dull screwdrivers - when we had to be towed because the nitro injector we added to the Taurus blew out the headers - when we set the garden shed on fire modifying the lawn mower to act as a rocket sled - when monopolized the television watching every minute of space shuttle coverage - when we burned out the microwave making nuclear balls of plasma - we thought we were out of the closet.  We thought it was clear.

We are this way.  We can't help it.  Some people just are.

And now there are hundreds of us in one place.  The tourists laugh nervously at the chainsaw robots and the dragons that spit real fire.  The compulsion that drives people to create such things seems the stuff of science fiction movies.  Are these the evil mad scientists come to roost among us?  Will they subjugate the world with giant robots?

Yes.  Empathetically, yes.

The true participants great each other asking, "what's your make?"  And nobody hesitates.

I make rockets.  I make clothes that electrically respond to your moods.  I make boats that cross the ocean without humans.  I make houses you can pedal.  I  make 20' tall computer controlled steel giraffes.

"I make giant killer robots," says one.

Nobody blinks.  Of course.  It must be.

The blonde haired girl and I traverse the festival in the shirts issued to volunteers - red on purpose - the joke: "you are the red shirts," reference to Crewman #1 in every Star Trek episode.

We move furniture.  Deliver power cables to the makers on the show floor.  I direct cars in the parking lot while just beyond the gate two middle-aged guys launch towers of spew from 75 of bottles of diet Coke contaminated with after dinner mints to the cheers of hundreds.  We are connected.  We are part of the show so we are one with the energy that drives us all year to drill, saw, solder, program over and over the drawer full of Arduino boards, so full there is no room for my socks.

I was walking through the Festival Hall, returning to home base after my stint running the sound board at the stage in the Expo.   I was moving between two points like any good line, when God himself spoke to me and I had to stop, captivated by the drum beats,  thoughts shredded and blown like autumn leaves on the bass line.

On the stage, two 7' tall Tesla Coils shot 12' arcs of lightning that made music.  Rock and roll.

It's not enough for these guys to simply command the lightning bolts - they made them sing.

I didn't move until it was over and the crowd that had gathered erupted into the sort of cheer that's reserved for the most famous of rock stars.  A  gutteral, visceral peal of pure ecstasy.

"I have never seen anything so cool," someone said standing beside me.

"...me neither," I said.

And it was true.

----

My happiest moment - the following day I brought my daughters to Maker Faire.  The blonde-haired girl were not working this day, but rather, observing, participating attendees. 

After the Tesla Coils blasted lightning music into the aether I looked at my children and asked, "What did you think of that?" and I was hoping, that for a moment maybe there would be some tiny connection - perhaps they would realize what kind of man I was, and what they had been witnessing all these strange years.

"Dad, that was unbelievably awesome," said my kids, wide-eyed, mouths agape. "I don't even know what I just saw.  It was awesome."

"Yes," I said, knowing that for once we were on exactly the same emotional track.  For once in nearly two decades they could appreciate something as I did.

I have rarely been happier.

----

We spent two full days at the Bay Area Maker Faire.  I forgot to put on sun screen so I added to the sunburn I got while acting as an "extra" in a Mythbusters episode that was shot outside - and we were forbidden to put on sunscreen because it would wreck the experiment.  

So now I am as brown as my Sicilian ancestors, like Archimedes, who made death rays and giant repeating arrow slinging bows.

And we are proud to be some of the doers,  the risk takers, the makers of things.  We are proud to be misunderstood.  A commander of computers and lightning.  A bringer of unforseen objects onto this sphere.  And I have been one always.

Nothing that has been said about me, or done to me, can ever change that.

I am ready to build.  

I am always building.

I am always making something.

----

"I have to go to Home Depot," I said to my daughter this morning before I left the house.  "You'll probably be at school when I get back, so have a happy day."

"What are you getting?" she asked.

"Some wood."

"Building something?"

"It's for the Tesla Coil."

"Yeah.  Cool.  The Tesla Coil.  How long till that's done?"

"Soon,"  I said.  "We'll have lightning soon."

"I can't wait," she said.

With a bright heart and equally bright smile I got into the jeep.  

Yes,  I am a good father.