Craft

  In elementary school, we went on some field trips.  The main purpose for the teachers was for us students to learn about something outside of the classroom environment.  For us students, it was a time to get away from school and pretend we were learning about something outside of the classroom environment.

 We were in 4th grade and went to the Columbia Museum of Art which was on Senate Street downtown.  The cool thing for me was that it was across the street from a local TV station (WIS).  I loved TV.  So, we were supposed to look at works of art from the Masters.  They also had a planetarium at the museum which was pretty cool.  

 The director of the museum (and the founder) was a man named Mr. Craft. He was pretty famous in the Art World.  We went into a room to have a class with him.  Our teacher thought he could teach us everything about art in ten minutes.  One of the things he wanted to talk about was sculpture.  I was sitting on the floor next to his feet.  He looked at me and asked me what a hammer was for.  I didn't hear the question, so I said I didn't know.  He laughed at me.  The whole class laughed at me.  He ridiculed me by saying I didn't know what a hammer was, and didn't my father show a hammer to me?  Didn't I use the hammer to pound in nails?  I felt stupid, and he let me know I was stupid.  The fact of the matter was that I hadn't heard his question.

 All the way back to school, I had to hear the laughter from my fellow students that I didn't know what a hammer was.  Years later, I went back to that museum to confront Mr. Craft, but he had already died.  Good for him.  I was going to bring a hammer.