THE GOLDEN HITS

THINKERS. ADVENTURERS.

MAKERS. WRITERS. INVENTORS.

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magnificent men + flying machines

THERE’S AN UNCONVENTIONAL HOBBY SWEEPING RURAL CHINA: BUILDING AND FLYING YOUR OWN AIRCRAFT.

PHOTOGRAPHER XIAOXIAO XU MET UP WITH THE COUNTRY’S AMATEUR AERONAUTS TO FIND OUT WHY.

Interviewer Chris Harrigan Photographer Xiaoxiao Xu

What’s the story behind these photos? I read an article in a Dutch newspaper about how farmers and other workers were building their own aircraft in the most unexpected places all over China. They weren’t working in fancy hangars with proper equipment; they were playing around in their backyards, recycling scrap metal and using household tools. I was fascinated by their imagination and persistence, and decided to go to China to know more about them.

How do you make an aircraft with no training? The aeronauts, as they’re called, do a huge amount of reading. Then it’s a matter of trial and error. Because of their limited knowledge, their work progresses fitfully, often needing to stop until they figure out a solution. They can be very creative: a repairman named Cao Zhengshu based his designs on a pigeon he bought from a market, while a construction worker named Zhang Dousan built his aircraft little by little on his home balcony using a gimlet, an electric drill and a welding machine. He kept a notebook filled with pencil drawings, every single line conceived by himself. “It was so difficult,” he told me, “I would rack my brain to think up solutions. Sometimes my wife would get mad because I wouldn’t stop for meals.”

Is this a common hobby in China? No, but flying is a common dream for all of mankind. Perhaps because farmers and workers stand with both feet on the ground, the contrast with flying is so big that it makes it extra attractive to them. One of the aeronauts I met was a hairdresser named Wang Qiang, who told me, “Maybe this is just how humans evolve: we ride horses, ride bicycles, drive cars, then fly aeroplanes. It’s my dream, my joy. Pretty much my life.”

What do the neighbours think of them? The other villagers consider the aeronauts to be “aero-lunatics”, building strange contraptions that look like they’ll never fly. They think they are idiots, given nowadays the whole of society considers making money the most important thing.

Do their contraptions actually work? Yes! I saw four of them fly, and even joined a machinist named Xu Bin on a flight in his two-seater gyroplane. Despite the noise of the propeller and the dizziness that took hold of me, I almost reached a moment of Zen while flying over a lake while the water reflected the light of the setting sun.

How long does it take to build a plane from scratch? The aeronauts spend months, years and decades experimenting. Even then, some of the planes can only fly 20 metres high. But it’s not about spending 20 years to fly 20 metres; it’s about spending 20 years to turn the impossible into something tangible.

Is this a dangerous hobby? Very. A former IT worker named Su Guibin suffered an accident when he collided with a telegraph pole mid-flight, leaving him paralysed from the waist down. “I’ve been bedbound for half a year,” he told me. “My toes have recently regained some feeling, but the doctor said full recovery is not guaranteed.” Still, Su holds on to his dream: the first thing he plans to do after recovery is fly his aircraft.

Are some designs more successful than others? They vary widely. Some aeronauts have been so successful they’ve started selling their aircraft commercially. On the other hand, people like Cao Zhenshu, who is 75 years old, have never successfully taken off. Because he’s illiterate, he struggles to discover the cause of his engineering problems, but he is still trying. Most of the materials he uses come from the recycling plant: the fuselage is made from aluminium tubes, the motor is from an old car, and the wheels are from kids’ bikes. He told me, “Making an aircraft is a sort of entertainment, in the same way other people play mahjong. I just feel so happy.” •

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A book of Xiaoxiao Xu’s photos, Aeronautics in the Backyard, was recently published by the Eriskay Connection.

Previous page When his village became too developed to safely fly over, Yuan Xiangqiu sold his handmade planes off as scrap iron, leaving him with only models.

This page Jin Shaozhi began flying at age 67. After tinkering with secondhand aircraft for a few years, he finally built his first plane from scratch, using instructions for a remote control model and scaling them up.

05 SMITH JOURNAL

Opposite Jin injured his spine and intestine in an accident in 2013, and his family now forbids him from flying. That hasn’t stopped him from testing new aircraft, though.

This page Construction worker Zhang Dousan spends half his income making aircraft. This partially constructed helicopter is his fifth. He also has plans for more unusual vehicles, including a flapping-wing aircraft.

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Opposite Wang Qiang currently manages a barbershop, but plans to open a small workshop so he can focus on building aircraft parts professionally.

This page Wang’s open-cockpit aircraft is powered by a refitted Yamaha speedboat engine.

Originally published in Smith Journal Volume 22

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GREAT DOESN’T ALWAYS START OUT GOODI spent my 20s not being good at something, not even knowing if I ever would be, and being really, really lost. I had to invent a way to think about it so I could get through the next day. I was very aware that the work I was making was not as good as the work I liked, that other people made, or the work that I wanted to make. I was very aware of how far I had to go all the time. In the movies, the way being a creative person is portrayed is almost always as a genius right out of the box. I’ve met people like that, but I think it’s much more common for it to be the other thing, where people go through a much slower process and get to be good at what they’re doing. I met David Sedaris when he was in his 30s; he hadn’t published a book and was teaching himself how to be a writer. It really wasn’t until my late 20s that I felt like I was decent and was starting to develop a voice that was my own.

MAKE IT UPI spoke at a high school two weeks ago. Getting ready for it, I realised when I was in high school I don’t think I ever met a person who had a job that was a creative job. I had a normal, middle-class, suburban growing-up. There were doctors, they were the fanciest people, but in our neighbourhood people

had normal jobs. When you come from that background, you really do just have to make up your own process. I would make up rules for myself about how to make stuff. One of the rules was I would take any assignment no matter how ridiculous I thought it was. Another rule was every story had to have some moment in it that was just there for me. Even if it was a story I was turning around in three hours for the evening news, there had to be something that was in there to amuse me, just like one little quote or whatever it was. There were little technical things and conceptual things.

IT’S OK TO TALK ABOUT YOURSELF I’ve learnt how to relax in conversation, in a way that I couldn’t when I was a kid and in my 20s. I wasn’t somebody who felt inherently comfortable with myself, or around other people. As a way to make it through conversations I would ask people a lot of questions and they would open up, and they would feel close to me; I wouldn’t feel much at all, usually. I would just feel like, ‘OK, got through that’. It was only as I got older that I realised I needed to talk about myself in conversations. I couldn’t just ask a lot of questions; I needed to actually be there, emotionally present, which truthfully is a lesson I always have to be mindful of.

SOMETIMES ENOUGH ISN’T ENOUGHWe once ran a report by a guy called Mike Daisey. He’d made this one-man show about Apple and how they make their computers in China. He said he went to visit the factories and he told a bunch of anecdotes about it. I saw the show and I was impressed, so I asked him to come on our show. I told him we’d need to fact-check the piece, because I assumed that in doing his show for theatre he might not be so super precise in the way he was putting things. He was a civilian; he wasn’t a journalist. We basically said we’d take out anything on the edge or arguable, and if we find that you’re wrong about something, you’re going to need to fix it. We called up a dozen people who had either been in the factories or human rights groups that were monitoring these plants and everything checked out except his claims about child labour. I confronted him on the air, asked him if he thought he mistook what he saw (in the factory). He was like, “No, no, I’m sure of what I saw”. And I felt like, well, the listener can judge for themself whether they believe him or they believe the preponderance of the evidence. But I made a mistake. It was a situation where everything we were able to check about the story checked out.

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things i’ve learnt WITH JOURNALIST, RADIO PRESENTER AND

THIS AMERICAN LIFE HOST, IRA GLASS.

Interviewer Patrick Pittman Illustrator A Little Island

IN THE MOVIES, THE WAY BEING A CREATIVE PERSON IS PORTRAYED IS ALMOST ALWAYS AS A GENIUS RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. I’VE MET PEOPLE LIKE THAT, BUT I THINK IT’S MORE COMMON TO GO THROUGH A MUCH SLOWER PROCESS.

DON’T EVEN TRUST YOUR MOTHERThe Daisey thing made me much more suspicious – I trusted him because we would sit in the same room and he would look me in the eye when he talked; I trusted him because things checked out, and I trusted him because he was a very good collaborator. Afterwards, I really became one of those reporters who feel like, well, if your mother tells you, you’ve still got to check it out. Up until then we had done fact-checking, but we did it at the level that most journalistic outfits do: the editor and the reporter talk through anything that could be questionable, and the editor sends back the reporter for more information on this point and that point. Now we have professional fact-checkers who go through everything line by line and basically re-report the entire story for any piece of reporting we do. I learnt not to trust at all.

IDEAS COME FROM OTHER IDEASFinding an idea for what you’re going to make your work about, that’s a job in itself. It’s not going to just descend on you like fairy dust. You have to actually go out and look for an idea. Where do ideas come from? They come from other ideas. You have to surround yourself with things that are interesting to you and just notice where your interest goes and where your questions are. Notice what gets you most excited to be thinking about and head towards that. But that’s a task that you have to set for yourself. You have to say: this is the part of the day when I’m doing that.

RADIO MAKES YOU IMAGINE YOU’RE THEMWe recently did two episodes from Harper High School on the south side of Chicago, which had 29 shootings last year. Eight kids died, recent and current students. We sent three reporters there for five months, into this school that has

so many shootings and so much death, to try to understand what these people know about things that the rest of us don’t. The kids are really traumatised, like in the same way that the kids who survived Columbine or Sandy Hook, but without the resources that those kids have to get through the trauma. We could document that, and we could document how gangs in that neighbourhood are totally different than what you think of when you think of American street gangs. And just the prevalence of guns – we could ask them, where did you get your gun? How did you get it? What did it cost you? Where do you hide it? We did all this, but I don’t know if we were trying to bring about any kind of change. I know that reporters often say that, but I feel like this is a really pure example of it. I don’t even know what kind of change you could try to effect that would do anything in this case – even if they passed all the gun control measures that are being fought over in the United States Congress and the White House, I believe they would have no effect on this situation at all. Guns would still make it into the neighbourhood in the same quantities. Given the tremendous amount of coverage of guns and murder in the United States, most of the murders are concentrated in certain poor communities, and we don’t hear that many stories of what it’s like to live in a neighbourhood like that. I feel like the value of those things on radio, is that radio makes it possible to imagine being them.

STICK WITH A STORY I was down in Georgia, doing just this little, light one-day story, kind of a nothing story. While I was looking for it people started telling me tales about this judge in this small town where I was: Brunswick, Georgia. I wasn’t even sure if the stories were true, but I thought, ‘If that’s true, somebody really needs to tell people. A reporter! A reporter should really come in here and do this story!’ And then I was like, ‘I guess I am a reporter, so I’ll do it. For the first four or five months I could not get anyone to talk to me on the record. People would say incredible things to me but nobody could give me any proof that

what they were saying was true, and I just couldn’t document the truth of this story. I wasn’t even sure if what people were saying was true, but I just felt like it was true. I just could not let it go, and my wife was like, “Why are you flying down there again?” And my staff just thought it was nuts. Ultimately, people came forward, I made a story, and we were able to get it on the air. One thing led to another and after the story aired, this judge was taken off the bench.

WE ARE THE LISTENEROften when I speak before public radio audiences, I get asked the question, “What’s the story that really affected you?” It’s such a romantic idea of what it means to be a reporter. Sadly the answer to the question is much more prosaic—all the stories that I work on affect me in exactly the way they affect the listener. If it’s moving to them, or if they feel touched by it, I was feeling the same thing when I was reporting the story. Somebody said something to me that was really emotional and it got to me. But it’s not bigger than the experience that the listener is having. I think most reporters feel like that.

REPORTING IS WHAT IT ISSadly, most journalism is like this: you go to a place, you ask somebody some questions, you write down what they say, and then you chop it down and you tell somebody else what they said. That’s reporting. It’s very glamorous.

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This American Life is a weekly one-hour radio show and podcast. It plays on ABC Radio National around Australia every Sunday. Sleepwalk With Me, a film produced by Ira Glass, is available to download. thisamericanlife.org •

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Originally published in Smith Journal Volume 07

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the weather manWHEN RUSSIAN PHOTOGRAPHER EVGENIA ARBUGAEVA JOURNEYED

INTO THE ARCTIC TO PHOTOGRAPH REMOTE WEATHER STATIONS, SHE CAME ACROSS A MAN WHO LEFT A LASTING IMPRESSION ON HER.

Interviewer Adrian Craddock

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A FEW YEARS AGO, MY FAMILY AND I WERE ON A DOG-SLEDDING TRIP IN SIBERIA WHEN WE GOT CAUGHT IN A SNOWSTORM.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thankfully, my dad was prepared for the situation. Being a seasoned sledder, he’d already mapped out a bunch of places we could shelter if the weather got bad. One of them was a remote meteorological station. It was fairly close, so we decided to speed over there and ask if we could spend the night.

From the moment I arrived at the station, I was really intrigued. It was staffed by about ten people, who were all employed to take weather readings. They lived in a very strange psychological atmosphere, being used to not seeing other people for years at a time. I started to wonder: who in their right mind would go to such a faraway place and work there?

After I came back from the trip, I started to research other remote stations. Being a photographer, I saw them as something I really wanted to capture.

I found out there was only really one way to visit these places: an icebreaker ship that departed once a year and delivered supplies. The problem was that I didn’t know how to get myself on board. So, I wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin’s Arctic advisor. He started his career in Tiksi, the Russian port town where I grew up, so I thought maybe he could help me. I introduced myself and explained my idea: to do a photo project about life at meteorological stations. I didn’t think it was going to work. But I received a reply with his signature. And it was a key to all doors.

My two-month journey on the ship began in late 2013. It didn’t go quickly. I was expecting that the atmosphere would be friendly, but everybody was depressed. After their work, the crew would just go to their own rooms and watch DVDs. The only friend that I made was a priest called Father Dimitri. Whenever we got near a station, he and a group of people would be choppered in for a few hours. The workers would unload a year’s worth of food, while Dimitri went and blessed the place with holy water. Staff at the stations also liked to confide in him. A lot of them really wanted to talk.

I was allowed on the helicopter most of the time, but I found my visits were very frustrating. I work very slowly, so nothing was really coming out of them.

That changed when we travelled to a station at Khodovarikha on the Pechora Sea – one of the most isolated meteorological outposts in Russia.

There must have been about seven of us in the helicopter on the way over, including a young couple called Rita and Ustin. Unlike the rest of us, their ride was one-way. They had been employed to help run the station, and ideally take over from the man who was currently there. He had been living and working alone for many years.

When we landed, a middle-aged meteorologist came out to meet us. His name was Slava. He didn’t seem like anyone else I’d come across on the journey. Most people were happy to see us when we arrived – they would chat and prepare tea. But Slava just sat there chain-smoking, looking at everybody with huge eyes. I had a feeling that he wanted everybody to finish as soon as possible and go away.

I could somehow relate to his pain and discomfort. He loved this place – it was his little world – and now all these people were invading it and making noise.

I eventually went up and introduced myself, asking a few questions about the station. Somehow, Slava started talking about this boat that he’d made himself. I asked where it was, and he replied, “Do you want me to show you?” I agreed, and we disappeared. It was a way for him to escape all the fuss.

We walked for about three kilometres, during which Slava told me about the birds that visited in the summer, and what life at the station was like. He spoke very slowly, as if every word was meaningful. He seemed like a Buddhist monk or something – a very pure person. Talking to him just felt incredibly natural.

Once he’d shown me the boat, I flew back to the ship. I had a feeling that I’d found what I was looking for, and made a decision to visit him again. I needed to photograph this guy.

Throughout the rest of my time on the icebreaker, I thought a lot about how I could return to Slava. And, when the supply trip finished, I decided to contact a company that does helicopter trips, and organise for them to fly me back. I wanted to contact Slava to let him know all this. But I couldn’t; there were problems with his radio.

I was worried. But I chose to take the risk, and flew out on New Year’s Eve. I brought a lot of stuff with me – oranges, champagne, sausages, cheese, vegetables. I also brought a bird as a gift. I carried it in my coat. I remember the people at the airport found that funny. It was like, “Who is this strange girl? She hired her own helicopter. She’s alone. She’s going to this God-forgotten place. Plus she has a bird.”

SLAVA JUST SAT THERE CHAIN-SMOKING, LOOKING AT EVERYBODY WITH HUGE EYES. I HAD A FEELING THAT HE WANTED EVERYBODY TO FINISH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND GO AWAY.

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We took off and hurtled across the tundra. The first thing I saw when we landed was an old dog. Then Slava came out. He didn’t seem surprised at all.

I said, “Do you remember me?”

He said, “Yeah, of course I remember you.”

I said, “I’m going to stay here for three weeks, is that okay?”

He said, “Sure.”

He helped me unload the helicopter then showed me to my bedroom. Apparently the last guy who had used it was a meteorologist who got evacuated after he went crazy. One day, he just went outside naked with a gun, saying he was protecting the station from aliens. He said he was hearing voices. The weirdest thing, though, was that his name was Evgeniy – the male version of mine.

I was very quiet during the first few days at the station. I just slept a lot. It was the time of year when the sun didn’t rise at all. The wind sounded like a baby crying in the distance, and the ocean was full of ice. When the waves came in, it made a horrible sound like somebody gnashing their teeth. It was all very strange.

After a while, though, I came to. I met up with Rita and Ustin again, but their spirits were so heavy. It was clear that the Arctic was very foreign to them, and they were only there because they couldn’t get jobs in their village. They lived in a separate part of the station to Slava, and would sometimes go weeks without seeing him. Their shifts didn’t align, they said, and, plus, “he just likes to be alone”.

I was very conscious of entering Slava’s world at a comfortable pace. I didn’t want my presence to be a big disturbance. So, one day, I went to his room to have tea and a chat. And that’s when I started to get to know him.

Slava was a kind person. No matter what you said, there would be zero judgment at all. Everything was received with smiles or nods. He seemed to understand the largeness of nature, and his place in it. He wasn’t running away from anything. In fact, he was very content, with no ambitions about buying things, about career, about anything really. He was the real thing. His mother had given birth to him in the cold. He couldn’t see himself living anywhere else.

Slava explained that he came to Khodovarikha after he met his wife, who he was still married to. They became involved when he was on vacation from another station. For ten years they had tried to live a normal life in a cosy town. But, in the end, Slava realised he needed to be in nature. He returned to the Arctic, and eventually got the job at Khodovarikha. He said that the first time he stepped on the place he loved it immediately.

Slava got a lot of satisfaction out of performing his duties. Every three hours he had to go outside and make measurements – the speed of the wind, the depth of snow, the temperature. Then he’d walk back to his office, record everything in a data book, and transmit it.

The rest of his time was devoted to chores. He collected firewood from the frame of an abandoned lighthouse, and melted snow for water. He watched the news and read a lot, too. His favourite writer was Hemingway.

One thing he didn’t do a lot of was cook. Meteorologists can make requests about what supplies they want dropped, and Slava usually just ordered a bunch of biscuits. He lived on the things. Whenever I cooked something, he’d usually say he wasn’t hungry. I’d ask, “What did you have?” He’d say, “just some tea with biscuits.”

I remember I did get him to eat properly on New Year’s Eve. I made lots of food, and set

up this big table in his room. He was very, very happy that day. He said that this was the first time he had celebrated New Year at the station. We all had champagne and I made a toast to Rita and Ustin. I said something like, “Congratulations on a year in the Arctic.” Their reply was pretty confusing: “We’re not in the Arctic, are we? We’re in the Antarctic.” They really had no real understanding of the place they were in.

I think Slava actually had a pretty good relationship with Rita and Ustin. But he didn’t like talking about his retirement much. He did mention it once when I lent him my satellite phone. He called his sister and she gave him the idea of maybe spending some time fixing up their parents’ house in the country. I think it was actually the first time he had talked to his sister in almost two years.

She had a lot of news for him. She even said that his niece had a baby girl around a year ago. That made Slava really excited. He got off the phone and he started thinking about a gift he could buy for her. “Do they make little bicycles for girls?” he asked.

Slava never did use the satellite phone to call his wife.

When I finally had to leave, he was very helpful. He didn’t want me to forget anything. The helicopter arrived and I walked out. Before I got on, I screamed back at him, “Slava, why do you never ask anything about me?”

He said, “Why do I need to ask? I already know you. You are the girl from the North.”

He was right.

I don’t think I can explain it, but he was probably one of the few people in my life who has understood me. •

HE WAS THE REAL THING. HIS MOTHER HAD GIVEN BIRTH TO HIM IN THE COLD. HE COULDN’T SEE HIMSELF LIVING ANYWHERE ELSE.

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Originally published in Smith Journal Volume 18

cards against humanity IT TAKES A LOT OF PEOPLE TO MAKE AN

ATOM BOMB. HERE ARE THEIR BUSINESS CARDS.

Writer Chris Harrigan Images The Center for Land Use Interpretation

020 SMITH JOURNAL

AURORA TANG WAS RUMMAGING THROUGH THE BLACK HOLE, A MUSEUM-SLASH-SECOND-HAND STORE IN THE BACK OF AN OLD LUTHERAN CHURCH IN NEW MEXICO, WHEN SHE STUMBLED ON SOMETHING INTERESTING.

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Finding interesting things in the Black Hole was not, technically speaking, hard. The place was full of arcane science equipment that had been thrown out by the nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the Black Hole’s owner, Ed Grothus, had once worked on building the atom bomb. Collecting atomic-era gadgets was Grothus’s way of reflecting on what he came to see as America’s nuclear folly, and when he died in 2009, all 450 tons of the stuff was sold off to the public.

Sensing the opportunity to snare some rare artefacts for her employer, a non-profit called the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Tang joined the throng of curious buyers. Most were drawn to the showy items – the cryogenic tanks and detonator cables – but it was something far more banal that caught her eye: a box of old rolodexes, each filled with hundreds of business cards.

The cards had been acquired by workers at the lab between 1967 and 1978, and represented the businesses both big and small that kept America’s nuclear program running during the height of the arms race. They may have seemed boring to the other collectors, but Tang knew her boss, Matthew Coolidge, would find them anything but.

The official history of the bomb is usually told in snapshots focusing on a big player or moment – Einstein, the Manhattan Project, the Trinity nuclear test. But flicking through the rolodexes, it became clear there was another way to frame the story: the arms race as an office job. The ‘heroes’ of the project weren’t big-name scientists and politicians in this retelling, but the everyday salespeople and clerks of America.

Back in their L.A. office, Tang and Coolidge got to work sorting the cards in chronological

order. This wasn’t difficult – an employee at the lab had helpfully recorded the date each card was acquired on its reverse side – but a trained eye would likely have been able to sequence them, too: tell-tale changes in fashion and graphic design indicate the passage of time, as crew cuts give way to mutton chops, and clean sans-serif fonts morph into the flashier logotypes of the hustling ’70s.

At first glance, the cards provide little information beyond the basics: name, occupation, address. Visually, though, they capture the psyche of a different era: an enthusiasm for all things nuclear is evident in the company logos, many of which feature dancing atoms and soaring rockets. Tellingly, perhaps, the collection stops just one year before the Three Mile Island meltdown cast a pall over the U.S.A.’s once unwavering belief in nuclear power as risk-free.

Tang and Coolidge slowly whittled the thousand-or-so cards down to their favourite 150, and published them in a photo book titled Los Alamos Rolodex. Fans of mid-century graphic design have praised the collection, but it’s more than an aesthetic time capsule: the cards are a reminder that, no matter how awe-inspiring (or existentially vexing) the endeavour, it’s the humdrum of everyday life – the quotidian services doled out by David’s Gloves and Hale Sanitary Supply – that gets us anywhere.

Today, many of the businesses listed on the cards no longer exist. Most were swallowed up by larger military companies; others simply shut up shop as the atomic period wound down. The personal cards, with their dated portrait photos, belong to the past as well. It’s unknown whether the people on them are still around ¬– neither Tang nor Coolidge could track any down – though it’s safe to assume they’re no longer in the bomb business.

“In this way,” Coolidge says in the book, “the cards today represent the opposite of what they originally were meant to do – connect people to people, seller to buyer.” They’re dead ends, now, rather than starting points. But what dead ends they are. •

022 SMITH JOURNAL

The C

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Originally published in Smith Journal Volume 22

the lone knitterWHEN IT COMES TO KNITTING PROJECTS THAT SCREAM

RAW MASCULINITY, ONE MAN WROTE THE BOOK.

Writer Chris Harrigan Photographer Peter Tarasiuk

IT WAS THE COWBOY ON THE FRONT COVER THAT FIRST CAUGHT CHRISTL HANSMAN’S EYE.

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A keen knitter, the San Franciscan lawyer had been perusing her local library’s arts and craft section when she saw him. He appeared on the back of a horse with two knitting needles in his hands; a pairing that seemed as incongruous as the Marlboro Man stumbling into Craft Town. The book’s title was no less intriguing: The Manly Art of Knitting.

A quick read of its blurb revealed that the author was a rancher named Dave Fougner. He’d written the book for two reasons: to introduce knitting to men who were too embarrassed to try it, and to encourage those who did knit to out themselves. It offered instructions on making the kinds of knittable objects a man on the range might reasonably put to use: a dog blanket, a woollen horse saddle, a hammock (the latter requiring knitting needles to be substituted for shovel handles).

Excited about her discovery, Hansman went online to see if anyone else had heard of it. Sure enough, the knitting forums were full of chatter about the book’s fabled existence. People got excited when she posted photos of the copy she had. They explained that the book was a cult classic. The great ‘cowboy poet’

Baxter Black had even penned a free verse about the time he’d found a version while fixing up an old shack in the desert. (“I fell upon it like a hyena on a carcass!” it reads.)

But for all the interest the tattered old pamphlet had sparked, the copy at her library was the only one Hansman could find. Published in 1972, it had been out of print for decades. Luckily, Hansman knew someone who could change that: her husband, David Lopes. He worked as the acquisitions editor at the Californian publishing house Ginko Press.

Impressed by his wife’s enthusiasm, Lopes agreed to take a chance on reprinting the manual. The only problem was that its author had fallen off the face of the earth. In the years since its release, Fougner had retreated into a Salinger-esque reclusion. He had no listed address. No one even knew if he was alive.

Hansman wasn’t put off. As a class actions lawyer, tracking people down was part of her day job. She asked the private investigator that worked at her firm to moonlight on the case, and together they pieced together an address in Sonoma County. Lopes wrote multiple letters requesting permission to reprint The Manly Art of Knitting. No reply ever came.

Years passed, and still no one had been able to make contact with Fougner. But just as Lopes and Hansman were ready to give up, they

managed to get the rancher on the phone. He consented to republish the book on one condition: he wouldn’t talk to the press. His talking days, he said, were behind him.

It always seemed odd to Fougner that the craft that helped him ranch independently was seen as effeminate. Historically, knitting was a vital skill for men. Among the first knitters were Arab fishermen, who created fishing nets by knotting ropes together. From there the craft passed on to European sailors, who used it to dress themselves. But as men started moving to the cities to work in factories, knitting became increasingly aligned as a pastime for the women who stayed at home.

Forty years after the release of his book, though, Fougner may have finally found his audience. The number of male commenters on yarn-related blogs around the world suggests that an international brethren of needle-happy fellows is proudly re-emerging.

If Fougner is happy about the change, he hasn’t mentioned it. “He’s a big, lonesome man of few words,” Lopes says. “He leaves a lot to the imagination.”

There was one thing he did tell Lopes before retreating back to his ranch: “He still knits.” •

The Manly Art of Knitting is available through Gingko Press.

024 SMITH JOURNAL

026 SMITH JOURNAL

B ACK

Using 3.25mm needles, cast on 107 (113-119-125-129) sts.

1st row – K2, * P1, K1, rep from * to last st, K1.

2nd row – K1, * P1, K1, rep from * to end.

Rep 1st and 2nd rows 7 times, inc one st in centre of last row … 108 (114-120-126-130) sts (16 rows rib in all).

Change to 4.00mm needles. **

Beg Patt

1st row – K9 (4-7-2-4), * P2, K6, rep from * to last 11 (6-9-4-6) sts, P2, K9 (4-7-2-4).

2nd row – P9 (4-7-2-4), * K2, P6, rep from * to last 11 (6-9-4-6) sts, K2, P9 (4-7-2-4).

Last 2 rows form patt for Back.

Cont in patt until Back measures 40cm from beg, ending with a 2nd row.

Shape Raglan Armholes

Keeping patt correct, cast off 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows … 102 (108-114-120-124) sts.

Dec one st at each end of next row, then in every foll 4th row 5 (3-3-1-2) times, then in every foll alt row until 38 (38-40-40-42) sts rem.

Work 1 row.

Leave rem sts on a stitch-holder for neckband.

FRONT

Work as for Back to **.

Beg Patt

1st row – K9 (4-7-2-4), * P2, K6, rep from * to last 11 (6-9-4-6) sts, P2, K9 (4-7-2-4).

2nd row – P9 (4-7-2-4), * K2, P6, rep from * to last 11 (6-9-4-6) sts, K2, P9 (4-7-2-4).

Rep last 2 rows once.

5th row – K9 (4-7-2-4), (P2, K6) 4 (5-5-6-6) times, (P2, Cable) 3 times, (P2, K6) 4 (5-5-6-6) times, P2, K9 (4-7-2-4).

6th row – As 2nd row.

Rep 1st and 2nd rows twice.

Last 10 rows form patt for Front.

Cont in patt until Front measures same as Back to beg of armholes, ending with a wrong side row.

Shape Raglan Armholes Keeping patt correct, cast off 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows … 102 (108-114-120-124) sts.

Dec one st at each end of next row, then in every foll 4th row 5 (3-3-1-2) times, then in every foll alt row until 66 (66-68-68-72) sts rem.

Work 1 row.

Shape Neck

1st row – Patt 2tog, patt 20 (20-20-20-22), turn.

Cont on these 21 (21-21-21-23) sts for left side of neck.

Work 1 row.

Dec one st at each end of next row.

Rep last 2 rows twice … 15 (15-15-15-17) sts.

Work 1 row.

Dec one st at beg only of next row.

Work 1 row.

Dec one st at each end of next row.

Rep last 4 rows 2 (2-2-2-3) times … 6 (6-6-6-5) sts.

Dec one st at raglan edge in every foll alt row until 2 sts rem.

Work 1 row.

Next row – Patt 2tog. Fasten off.

Slip next 22 (22-24-24-24) sts onto stitch-holder and leave for neckband. With right side facing, join yarn to rem 22 (22-22-22-24) sts for right side of neck.

Next row – Patt to last 2 sts, patt 2tog … 21 (21-21-21-23) sts.

Work 1 row.

Dec one st at each end of next row.

Rep last 2 rows twice … 15 (15-15-15-17) sts.

Work 1 row.

Dec one st at end only of next row.

Work 1 row.

Dec one st at each end of next row.

Rep last 4 rows 2 (2-2-2-3) times … 6 (6-6-6-5) sts.

Dec one st at raglan edge in every foll alt row until 2 sts rem.

Work 1 row.

Next row – Patt 2tog. Fasten off.

SLEEVES

Using 3.25mm needles, cast on 51 (51-53-53-55) sts.

Work 16 rows rib as for Back.

Change to 4.00mm needles.

Work 4 rows stocking st, beg with a knit row.

5th row – K2, M1, knit to last 2 sts, M1, K2 … 53 (53-55-55-57) sts.

Cont in stocking st, inc one st (as before) at each end of every foll 6th row until there are 65 (73-75-83-85) sts, then in every foll 8th row until there are 81 (83-85-87-89) sts.

Cont without further shaping until Sleeve measures 48cm from beg (or length desired), ending with a purl row.

Shape Raglan

Cast off 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows … 75 (77-79-81-83) sts.

Dec one st at each end of next row, then in every foll 4th row until 61 (63-63-65-65) sts rem, then in every foll alt row until 13 sts rem.

Work 1 row.

Cast off.

NECKBANDNote We recommend using mattress stitch to sew up your jumper.

Join raglan seams, noting that tops of sleeves form part of neckline. With right side facing, using 3.25mm circular needle and beg at left back raglan seam, knit up 11 sts across left sleeve cast-off, knit up 27 (27-27-27-29) sts evenly along left side of front neck, knit across sts from front stitch-holder, knit up 27 (27-27-27-29) sts evenly along right side of front neck, knit up 11 sts across right sleeve cast-off, then knit across sts from back stitch-holder … 136 (136-140-140-146) sts.

1st round – * K1, P1, rep from * to end.

Rep last round 17 times.

Cast off loosely in rib.

TO MAKE UP

Do not press. Join side and sleeve seams. Fold neckband in half to wrong side and slip-stitch loosely in position.

FISHERMAN’S JUMPER

Measurements XS S M L XL

To Fit Chest cm 90 95 100 105 110

Actual Size (slightly stretched) cm 97 102 107 112 117

Length (approx) cm 65 66 67 68 69

Sleeve Length cm 48 48 48 48 48

Balls Required cm 15 16 17 18 19

Needles and Extras 1 pair each 3.25mm and 4.00mm knitting needles and a 3.25mm circular knitting needle (60 - 80cm long) or size needed to give correct tension • Cleckheaton Country Naturals 8 Ply 50g Balls (1805 Natural) • 2 stitch-holders • cable needle • wool needle for sewing seams.

Tension 22 sts and 30 rows to 10cm over stocking st, using 4.00mm needles. To work a tension square, using 4.00mm needles, cast on 33 sts. Work 44 rows stocking st. Cast off loosely. Check your tension carefully. If less sts to 10cm use smaller needles, if more sts use larger needles.

Special Abbreviations Cable = slip next 3 sts onto cable needle and leave at front of work, K3, then K3 from cable needle. M1 = make 1 - pick up loop which lies before next stitch, place on left hand needle and knit into back of loop.

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You don’t have to live on a ranch to be a manly knitter. All you need is some wool, a couple of needles and the patterns below.

RIBBED BEANIE

Measurements To Fit Head 58cm

Needles and Extras • 1 long 3.75mm knitting needle and 1 set 3.75mm double-pointed knitting needles or size needed to give correct tension. • 2 x Cleckheaton Country 8 Ply 50g Balls (2194 Eco Green) • wool needle for sewing in ends.Tension 32 sts and 32 rows to 10cm over relaxed rib, using 3.75mm needles. To work a tension square, using 3.75mm needles, cast on 47 sts. 1st row – K2, * P1, K1, rep from * to last st, K1. 2nd row – K1, * P1, K1, rep from * to end. Last 2 rows form rib. Work a further 44 rows rib. Cast off loosely. Check your tension carefully. If less sts to 10cm use smaller needles, if more sts use larger needles.

B E A N I E

Using long 3.75mm needle, cast on 136 sts.

Change to set of 3.75mm double-pointed needles and divide as evenly as possible between 3 needles when working first round.

Beg Rib

1st round – * K1, P1, rep from * to end.

Join to work in rounds, taking care not to twist cast-on edge.

Rep last round until Beanie measures 19cm from beg.

Shape Crown

1st round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, P1, K3tog, P1, (K1, P1) 13 times, rep from * to end … 120 sts.

2nd and foll alt rounds – Rib to end.

3rd round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, P1, K3tog, P1, (K1, P1) 11 times, rep from * to end … 104 sts.

5th round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, P1, K3tog, P1, (K1, P1) 9 times, rep from * to end … 88 sts.

7th round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, P1, K3tog, P1, (K1, P1) 7 times, rep from * to end … 72 sts.

9th round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, P1, K3tog, P1, (K1, P1) 5 times, rep from * to end … 56 sts.

11th round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, P1, K3tog, P1, (K1, P1) 3 times, rep from * to end … 40 sts.

13th round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, P1, K3tog, P1, K1, P1, rep from * to end … 24 sts.

15th round – * Ybk, sl 1, K2tog, psso, K1, rep from * to end … 12 sts.

Break off yarn, thread end through rem sts, draw up tightly and fasten off securely.

TO MAKE UP

Do not press. Sew in ends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These patterns appear courtesy of Cleckheaton. They’ve been tweaked a bit to fit Smith Journal. For more patterns visit cleckheaton.com.au •

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Originally published in Smith Journal Volume 14

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Until then, the Smith Journal team

Cover image: The Golden Record. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech