I never had a hobby in the traditional sense. I tried stamp collecting because my brother collected coins. Gathering tons of stamps was no problem, but I didn’t see the point of ‘collecting’ them. So they have remained in a box to this day.
Below are what I would regard as my hobbies – at least as close to a hobby as I will ever get.
Poolside Plants
When I built my second greenhouse, I surreptitiously turned it into a business. Truth of the matter is that I was more interested in the building itself and the idea of operating a small business. Unfortunately for the plants they came in a distant third place. By the time I finished construction and put together a catalog for the business there was not much time to cultivate a sustainable business before graduating from high school. Below is a copy of the catalog I put together.
Delcon
Here’s a tighter, more matter-of-fact version:
Delcon
I started Delcon while I was in high school. To anyone looking in from the outside, it appeared to be a small conglomerate complete with a corporate identity, constitution, bylaws, stock certificates, shareholder meetings, accounting records, and several operating divisions.
In reality, it was a personal learning exercise. Rather than reading about corporations, I built one and treated it as though it were real. As new interests emerged—a theater, a greenhouse, and other small ventures—they simply became additional divisions within Delcon.
A few friends became shareholders and participated in meetings, but the real purpose was to learn firsthand how organizations are structured, governed, and managed. Looking back, Delcon was less a business than a self-directed education that proved invaluable in the enterprises that followed.
Omni Music Systems
My brother and I had a friend who operated a music machine that provided recorded music for school dances, weddings, etc. Working with him spurred our mutual interest in the Pioneer brand of stereo equipment. We each had a growing pile of stereo gear so it seemed logical that we should venture out on our own. We started Omni Music Systems with just two objectives: have fun and earn enough money to buy more gear.
Click here for gear I designed and built.
Steam
My 100-year old church has two heating systems – a large, forced air system for the sanctuary and a steam radiator system for the offices. Both originally burned coal before being converted to natural gas.
The forced air system was like your home furnace except that this thing was humongous. Built out of steel, concrete, and brick it was literally part of the building spanning two floors underground. The fire chamber was large enough to seat a party of six for dinner. The blower was ten feet in diameter supplying heat to six zones through underground tunnels, ducts in the attic large enough to walk through and two vertical shafts. I oversaw the largest project in church history to install five modern furnaces into this original architecture.
The steam system required a licensed engineer to operate and maintain it daily. Unlike hot water systems, steam systems have the potential of great destruction should they fail. A boiler explosion would literally level a portion of the building. When a retired engineer from the Minneapolis Public Library was no longer able to be the engineer of record, I was asked to obtain a license so that I could assume this role. Once licensed I performed daily tasks which included “blow-downs”, safety inspections and maintaining a signed logbook of all operations. Over the next two years I learned much more as I began refurbishing this long-neglected system.
I picked up a copy of the book The Lost Art of Steam Heating. The author spent a lifetime unraveling the mysteries of these systems by embarking on a journey through 200 years of history. The guys who designed and installed these systems are from a very different era and walk of life. A time when gargoyles were put atop skyscrapers that nobody would ever see. Steam radiators were practical expressions of art.
Today we call them the Dead Man’s Club since none of them are alive today to explain how these peculiar relics work. We think we know how they work but whenever they misbehave, we are quick to point out that they are old, obsolete and need to be beat into submission.
Heat was not a commodity a century ago. The Dead Man’s Club aimed to provide warmth – life – for many generations long after their own demise.
There are no diagrams left behind, yet the systems themselves speak to us on behalf of the artisans of a century ago. That is if we are listening. If we check our ego long enough to understand their story, then we begin to appreciate their brilliance. As we realize that this is more than just a history lesson, we start to assimilate these brilliant minds into our modern world.
Where did we get the notion that anything old no longer has any intrinsic value?
These majestic systems are as elegant as nature itself. They had to be if they were to work at all. There were no computers, electronics, motors, or even electricity. The only way to generate and distribute heat throughout a building is to understand the physics of steam well enough to coerce it. Show me somebody who thinks they can force steam to work the way they want it to, and I will show you somebody who probably thinks they can successfully dominate mother nature.
The first thing the book teaches us is that most of the problems with steam heating systems are self-inflicted after years of fixes to fixes that we made to keep these relics working until they can be replaced. If you want the problems to go away undo all your fixes and seek understanding.
Movie Film
I have always had a fascination with movie film. From being the kid that always got to run the big 16mm projector in elementary school, to building a sorta look a like projector, to making my own movies, to buying a behemoth projector from the Rochester Chick Hatchery, to collecting feature films.
It was a sad day when they retired film from all movie theaters in favor of digital distribution and projection.
These films were shot in 8mm Kodak Ektachrome film. Shooting a movie on 8mm film was no easy task. The film came on 25-foot spools that you would run through the camera twice. When developed they would slice it lengthwise returning a 50-foot reel of finished film that would run about 3 ½ minutes.
To edit the film each scene would be cut apart, trimmed for content, and then glued back together using an emulsion adhesive. It was quite a trick to get the film precisely cut and spliced to run through the projector without jamming.
The camera used for shooting had many adjustments and there was no through the lens viewfinder. The only way to know if you got the settings correct and framed your scenes properly was to wait two weeks for the film to be returned from Kodak.
The cost of one spool of film (3 ½ minutes) with developing was about $17 which translates to $95 today. For a kid in elementary school, it got to be very expensive very quick. I did not have the luxury of reshooting scenes more than twice so my films contain the best of what I had.
Click here to see my film collection.