It was like all other days, except it was during the school holidays. With schools closed and no libraries around, I had to endure boredom by stalking my brothers. One day, I overheard them planning to make wire cars. Andrew wanted to make a Datsun and Lovemore wanted a Mazda. I wanted a lorry, a Tata, I loved Tata. I remember when Tata first came to Zimbabwe, my dad was part of the team that certified its fitness for use. Day and night, dad would sit by the couch with a pen in hand a notebook by his side. He would emphatically write and doodle in his book.

“What are you doing?”

“Eddie, stop disturbing your father. He is busy,” a voice would piece across the living room, normally coming from the kitchen or the main bedroom. It was my mother. She did not like us to disturb dad when he was doing his math stuff.

“I am trying to see if Tata is stable in our roads. Do you want to ride in a car that might topple when you get to a mountainous place?”

“No, I want to be safe. So, you can tell whether a car will not topple by looking at those numbers? Cool.”

“Yes, but numbers are not enough. I have to drive the car around the country in roads of all kinds to be sure if my numbers are correct.”

Dad never spent a lot of time home, besides his pursuit for money, he would spend several days testing cars which the army was considering purchasing. That left mom watching over us and my brothers bossing over me. If my dad had been around, maybe I would have asked him to make a Tata for me. After all, he tested and approved it for driving in Zimbabwe. But, he was not there and I had to ask my brothers for the favor. I tried asking Andrew, who seemed to be the more sensible of the two, but he chose to ignore me. Lovemore told me he was not going to make a Tata for me.

I watched Andrew and Lovemore leaving without giving a second thought to my desires. But, I wanted a lorry, a Tata. I wanted a car that could carry a loaf of bread or a pint of milk when mom sends me to the grocery store. I wanted a lorry, so I followed them. I was adamant I will make them change their minds by wailing like a hungry puppy and running behind them like an angry bulldog. It did not work.

“Go home. Go and play with kids of your age.”

“But, I want a lorry. I want a Tata, like the one dad drives.”

“Go home, now.”

The change of tone meant I should oblige. I did.

They never intended to harm me. It was out of love and concern, I guess. I had no shoes to cover my feet from the thorns or broken glass. To make wire cars, wires were required and the only place to find them was around rubbish pits or trash cans. Rubbish sites were not safe, they had thorns and broken glass sprinkled all over them as if to scare away trash collectors. Drunk soldiers and civilians, carelessly threw beer bottles close to the trash sites. Although the camp was known for strict discipline, they was no way of controlling drunkards except suspending them, which never worked. My brothers did not want me to be a victim of other people’s negligence. So, they did not want to see me close to a trash can. I should have loved them for caring, but I only wanted to be with them. I wanted to help them pick up the old wires, copper and steel. It was fun. Ravaging the dustbins in search of treasures was every kid’s dream. I had a dream too, yet I had to watch from afar my brothers ransacking the neighborhood refuse. At such moment, I hated being a first grader.

From a distance, I followed my brothers. Andrew was the mastermind and Augustine was the muscle, they were the A team. My name started with an ‘e’, I never fitted in. With grace and childish glee, they picked wires buried in the trash, untied garden poles or cut a neighbor’s garden fence using rocks. I wanted to be part of them, but I was too young.

Since obviously no one was going to make a kid’s dream come true, I began to look for my own wires. I did not want to cross my brothers, so I avoided trash cans and gardens and looked for the treasure in the fields. In the army camp, where I lived, every empty space was turned into a corn and sweet potato field in summer and nothing in the winter. It was winter, so I was not trespassing.

I stumbled into a gold mine. They were wires of all kinds everywhere, copper, silver and un-bendable steel. Andrew always said un-bendable wire was useless, you could not make a car shape with it. Quietly, I picked my wires and hid them in a plastic bag. I did not want my brothers take them away from me.

“Wire, wire, wire,” I cried out loud.

I thought I was being helpful, I did not know I was putting myself at risk of a human stampede. My brothers and their friends ran so fast like a woman who encountered a lion in the jungle. If you meet a lion you run, that is what I thought until later in life. Huffing and puffing like a coal train, they rushed to the field and scavenged for the wires. In a short while they had enough to make their cars. Their cars, not my lorry.

I thought finding the wires would grant me a premium membership into the A team. I was wrong. As soon as they had enough wires, they chased me away. They were thorns in the field, they said. Completely forgetting I was in the field before them. Go home and read, they shouted. I loved reading, but that was not a good excuse for failing to make me a lorry.

No one was going to make my lorry, so I made one for myself. I watched how my brothers made the wire cars and quickly began making my own. Using a small rock and a big rock, I straightened the wires first by hammering the kink ends. I continued doing this until all my wires were straight, neat and without any kinks. Occasionally, I missed the wire and the small rock would land on my fingers, but big boys do not cry.

“So, you think you can make your own car? Good luck.”

My brothers mocked me, but I ignored them. They laughed as I my tiny hands were bruised by the rocks, but I continued. No one was going to stop, I resolved. Using a pen barrel, I placed the wire inside and bent it into the shape of the side of the lorry. I made two sides which were mirror images. We called the two sides shapes.

Carefully, I cut my wires using the rocks into seven equal pieces. These wires joined the shapes to make a nice shell of a lorry. Connecting the wires was difficult, my hands were small and weak. Thank God for the person who found copper electrical wiring was good for joining the struts to the shapes. With my bruised little hands, I successfully made my first wire car.

After making the wheels using body cream lids, jest turned into wonder as my brothers saw me following behind their entourage with my lorry. Andrew came to inspect my car, he could not believe his eyes. Like a helpful brother, he tweaked a number of things to prove to everyone he was a caring and loving brother.

“Look at my younger brother’s car. He is very smart. He made it on his own.”

I was a man now. My brothers were proud of me. Quickly, I forgot the jeer and the jest. I was now part of the A team. May be my mother should have considered changing my name to Addmond.

It did not take long for me to be one of the best wire-car makers in the neighborhood, but I loved reading more. I chose to spend my days sitting at home learning to read and write than bruising my hands making cars. Mother thought I was an exemplary child and all my siblings should have emulated me. When I got tired of reading or my mother sent me for errands, I will drive my lorry. It was fun, and I enjoyed it.

Once in a while, a new car making trick will come along, through people from other places or pure innovation. Most of the time it was pure innovation. Although Andrew was a snob most of the times, he was a genius. He once invented a car that moved on its own. His car became a center of attraction for a couple of weeks until a fateful accident.

I think it was from a science class that Andrew learned heated water can be used for propulsion. Andrew was now in secondary school, so he was taking a science class. As a boy generous with knowledge, every new thing he learned, he shared with us. They had learned about steam turbines, rockets and the like, so he thought of a way of propelling the wire cars using water.

“What is the empty perfume can for?”

One day, Andrew made a car that had no steering wheel. He took a perfume can with the nozzle still fitted and poked a hole at the bottom. I was in the A team now, but did not have an engineering rights. I was just a handyman. Andrew instructed me to pour water in the perfume can and leave some space for air. As everyone was still wondering about water and the can, Andrew instructed Augustine to start a fire. It was wintertime, so adults did not even ask about the blast. Andrew carefully placed the car with the attached perfume can onto the fire.

We watched in shock as the car charred on fire. When the water started boiling, carefully Andrew removed the peg that was on the tail end of the perfume can. Like a rocket, the car dashed forward with the water gushing out at the back. Everyone stood in amazement at the miracle wrought by Andrew.

The story of a wire car that moves using water spread in the neighborhood. For several weeks, many kids came to witness the wonders of science. Not to be outdone, other kids made their own cars that used water propulsion. Friday evening nights quickly became a car show, people coming to show off their latest innovations.

Some kids tied a flashlight on their cars, others made cars that had doors that could be opened, yet others made cars that had seats inside. I made a car without wheels. It was not a car per se, but a boat-car. Instead of spending time looking for plastic cup lids or bending wire into a wheel, I made two arcs and put them at the bottom of my car. Some people actually loved the car, my brothers were not impressed.

We lived in an army camp, just over a decade after the liberation war. Finding a bullet or a grenade in the field or by the wayside was not uncommon. One of my brother’s friends found a bullet and thought he could use the gunpowder as a propellant. He cracked open the bullet and put the gunpowder in an empty perfume can. Unfortunately, he was caught by an adult before he could put his car on fire.

“No more wire car shows.”

When my father heard about this he was irate. We were banned for life from holding, touching or looking at a wire. News of kids who got burned using Andrew’s wire-car propulsion utility made matters even worse. My whole family was banned from even starting a fire. I was only in the third grade with a decade in front of me to enjoy the pleasures of wire-car making and driving. It was a dream shattered.

After my father retired and we had to relocate to rural areas, the dream went up into smoke. I lost my childhood. No matter where I went, I could not find a wire. Besides reading novels, in my spare time I would spend time fantasizing about the kind of car I made. I was now the older brother, my brothers had outgrown wire-cars. With my young brothers, Allen and Elton, we turned bricks into cars and we would push them around the house.

For almost eighteen months, the only car we had were the broken bricks left behind when my mother built our kitchen. It was not much, but it gave us the distraction we needed. Allen liked to play a thief and I was the cop. Elton was whatever he thought he wanted to be that day. He never seemed to decide what he wanted. We would play with the bricks and every time I would imagine it was a wire-car.

I missed wire cars. With drought hitting haunting Zimbabwe, it did not get any better.

I saw the dreary congress, perched on a dry msasa tree disinterestedly. No cries, no fighting, no playing, only empty gazes to the oblique horizon. The scorching tropical heat sucked every drop of life from the patched ground. Even baboons had been hit by the impartial drought.

A few feet away, a stately primate, probably the chief, stood break a branch of a cactus. Everything had turned golden brown. The leaves, the barks and even the soil, except the bunch of cactus trees by the molehill. Carefully, the chief collected a few branches and headed back to the congress.

With a loud cry, ho hu-u, ho hu-u, ho hu-u, the chief announced its find. A small-emaciated baboon was forced to eat the find. Like a bunch of soccer fans in a tropical stadium, they all looked pensively at the young baboon. They had made him a guinea pig.

After a while, nothing happened to the baboon. As if on cue, the baboons screeched and yelled as their swung from the tree to the cactuses. They had found the meal for the day. In few seconds, the only hint of green in the dry forest was gone.

“In years of drought, such as this, watch the baboons. Anything they eat or drink is good for humans,” mumbled my grandfather.

At least, grandpa’s advice was sensible; in some villages, people had gone extreme. Do not eat meat when you visit around, mom always said. Some people where hunting monkeys and baboons. The primates had better meat than steak or chicken, so I heard.

We did not go cactus hunting. Cactus were poor in dealing with hunger, grandpa said. I did not ask him how he knew. He was old; I do not know how many droughts he survived. I guess he was now a survival expert.

When the first rains of the previous season hit the ground, mom told everyone there was going to be a drought. In 1994, all the wild fruits produced tons of fruit. Prices for all wild fruits-mazhanje, tsvubvu, matohwe, matamba and masawu went down in Karoi. Everyone was selling them. When wild trees bear many fruits, then a drought follows.

The signs of drought were written everywhere. You only needed to know what to look for. Mopane worms are common in the south, but that year we collected them behind our homestead. I lived in the north. Mopane worms were taboo in my village. I do not know why.

A few weeks after planting, the fields where green and the plants growing. Unexpectedly, an army of locust invaded our fields. Every evening, my siblings, cousins and I would go to the fields and pick the locusts. Grandma taught us how to cook them. Forget the drought, those green monsters tasted well.

In only one week, all the fields were empty. The locusts were gone, and so where the crops. We had to replant. Mom had good corn in storage, but she only planted the bad one. It only took three weeks to know why. The rains where gone. All the crops dried and we all braced ourselves for a long drought.

I do not remember the 1994/95 drought because I went without food. No. Three months before the rain season, my dad died. My dad died a reasonable death, more people died of hunger. However, others died of food poisoning.

During the drought, some people saw baboons eating mupama, a wild yam. They searched for mupama tuber and cooked. Mupama looks like cassava; they figured it might contain carbohydrates. Not necessarily carbohydrates, rather make them full.

Many people were rushed to the hospital in Chitindiva. One family died. They did not cook mupama well, grandma said. You slow boil mupama for at least half a day, she continued. Mupama tasted like yams, if cooked well. I never ate it, I was afraid of dying.

You have heard, too many cooks spoil the soup, not for mupama. Too many cooks turns the yams into poison. Only one person was allowed to cook a pot. If you cannot continue cooking, you had to throw the whole pot away.

Furthermore, moving firewood in the fire was not allowed, at all. You had to keep adding firewood and make sure the amount of heat reaching the pot stayed the same. The number of bodies from botched preparations and the king had to pass an edict banning people from eating mupama.

Mom saw the signs of drought and prepared well. I never ate mupama. I do not know what it tastes like. But, one thing I know, even when push comes to shove, I will not eat mupama. Let the baboons eat mupama, not me.

I do not know how people from my village survived the drought. Mom bought a house in Karoi, so my family moved. In Karoi, the drought had hit, but not that bad. For the next half a year, we ate sadza made using yellow corn. I hated it.

Yellow corn taste better than white corn, mom said.

But, there was no culture of wire-cars in my neighborhood, Chikangwe. The kids of my age preferred playing ball games using recycled plastic bag soccer balls. The games were seasonal, I do not know who came up with the schedule, but everyone religiously adhered to it.

It was taboo to play catch in summer, summertime was for soccer. I was not into soccer, I did not support any team. Most kids supported either Dynamos, Caps United or Highlanders. Those were the big teams in Zimbabwe. So, whenever we played soccer, we named our teams after the soccer giants.

“I am Peter Ndlovu.”

“No, Peter Ndlovu never played for Dynamos. He was a Highlanders player.”

“Who cares? Today, Peter Ndlovu is playing for Dynamos.”

Peter Ndlovu was a soccer legend. I did not know anything about soccer. I could not tell the difference between a midfielder and a striker, but I knew Peter Ndlovu. Who did not know Nsukuzonke-everyday? A Dynamos defender once tore his own pants after Peter Ndlovu dribbled past him.

But, soccer was boring. I did not like spending an hour chasing a ball and kicking it around. There was no room for creativity or innovation. A ball that moves on its own was practically useless. I had ideas. I wanted to turn wire into moving objects.

In fifth grade, I remained bored wished my family did not leave the military camp. One day, my young brother, Allen thought of making wire-cars. Together with his friends, Prince and Kudakwashe, they went for wire hunting and came back with a good loot.

I watched them bending the wires into shapes, it was pathetic. The creativity in me was insulted. I love reading, but wires were too tempting. For a little while, I wrestled with prioritization of leisure activities, read a book or make a wire-car. It was a no-brainer.

“Allen, do you mind if I make the car for you?”

Of course, he did not mind. I was older than him, his options were limited if he refused I would have taken the wires and make the car without his consent. It was one method to execute brotherly privileges I learned from my siblings.

I was now ten years old, smart and sharp. So, Allen did all the dirty work. It is amazing how the cycle of life turns. I perfectly replaced my older brother, Andrew and Allen filled up my other brother, Augustine’s place. Unfortunately, Elton, the last born in my family took up my shoes and became the tail.

When I did my work I wanted everything in place and Allen knew it. Before I bent the first wire, he had to make sure all the wires were perfectly straight using a ruler or a straight edge. I did not like bending the wires using my fingers, so a barrel of a pen was always in hand. My wire-car assembly workshop, the rock outcrop in the front yard of our house, was renowned for neatness.

At the rock, creativity and entrepreneurship sprouted with Allen and his friend’s help. After I made the first car, the legend of the great wire-car maker spread in my community like wild fire. People came to watch my designs rock the dirty streets. Nematombo Road quickly became the place to witness latest innovations in car-wire assembly and I was the chief engineer.

In sixth grade, I was joined the science club. I only joined because the club was sponsored by Rydings School. Every kid dreamt of going to Rydings. It was a private primary school two miles outside Karoi. Rydings had its own private game park, school buses and a farm.

Only white estate farmers and rich people from Harare could afford sending a kid to Rydings. The rest of us, only wished to win a lottery. The science club offered an opportunity to spend a day at Rydings. I could not afford missing that opportunity.

Although I had ulterior motives joining the club, I still had science expectations. I thought a science club did cool experiments, like the one Andrew used to do. Instead we spent half the time learning about the environment and conservation. It was not a science club, but a junior environmentalist club.

Only the prospects of going to Rydings kept me in the club, among other things. During the course of the term, there was a national design competition. Throughout Zimbabwe, primary school kids were asked to design anything from bottle tops. Since it was a recycling gig, my club was at the forefront of the competition. It gave me another reason to stay.

It is amazing how creative five to seventh graders can be. One kid made a grocery basket using bottle tops. Although tiny, the basket was beautiful. I had to make something bigger and better.

I asked Allen and his friends to find bottle tops for me. I destroyed one of the wire cars I had. I straightened the wires. The used to be Allen’s job, but I wanted to make something perfect. So, I did it myself. After a short while, Allen brought two bags full of bottle tops.

With everything in place, I set out to make a cap. It was a lot of work, I had underestimated it. On each bottle top, I had to poke four holes on the ends to which the wire passed. I had no drill, but a nail and a rock. As a perfectionist, I did not even consider asking Allen to help. This project was important to me.

After many hours of poking holes and fitting the bottle tops on the model cap frame I had made, I resigned for the day. Reuben, one of my brother’s friends saw the cap. He was impressed.

“Professor, this is a beautiful chair. Is this a school project? “

“No, it is a cap,” I corrected him.

That evening, I left the cap on a table in the living room. When my mother came home she saw it and was impressed. This chair is beautiful, she said. Then I knew I had made a chair and not a cap.

The next morning, I left the back and sitting part of the chair intact and changed the feet. Instead of drilling four holes, I only needed one, at the center of the bottle tops. I made the feet from a pile of bottle tops.

Clearly, I wrote my name on a label and stuck it to my chair. Together with more than a hundred other kids, I submitted my entry for the competition. A few months later, my expertise with wires and other materials received local recognition. My chair was voted the second best bottle top competition winner. I won an environmental protection magazine and a T-shirt.

Towards the end of the school term, we finally had a trip to Rydings Junior School. It was a memorable event. At the school, were shown around the game park. They had many wild animals, but since they were a school they were not allowed to keep lions or cheetahs. After the safari ride, we sat down to watch a movie about making money through recycling.

It was quite ironic, as kids from the ghetto we recycled everything, but we were still poor. We bought used clothes every month at salaule. In the streets, we played soccer with a ball made from plastic bags. After school, we ransacked trashcans looking for plastic or shoe polish lids to make wheels for our wire cars. Most of the kids wore uniforms left by their older siblings. But, we were still poor.

I was convinced, recycling was a rich man’s invitation for the poor to pick up bread crumps on his table. But when you are poor, you cannot afford to refuse. We recycled not because there was money involved, but because we could not afford buying new clothes, toys or soccer balls.

After finishing primary education, I transferred to secondary school. I fancied myself an adult, after all I was now a teenager. Adults do not play with wire-cars. I stopped playing with wire-cars, but not making them.

It had been four years since my father passed away and my family had moved on. A war broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Africans we believe in Ubuntu, so my president sent an army to DRC. Unfortunately, the expenses of covering the war affected the national coffers and my family bore the brunt of inflation.

I will never forget the day my school headmaster punished me for failing to pay school tuition on time. It was very callous of him, considering my mother visited his office for an extension since she did not have the money. Things were getting tough for my family, but my mother kept a straight face and a smile.

I did not plan to be a wire-car manufacturer, it happened by accident.

One day, I made a small sedan, with seats, a trunk and doors. It had everything and many movable parts. I took the car for a road test before I handed it to Elton. Elton had looked for the wires, so it was his car. One of my more affluent neighbors saw the car and ran to my mom with a two dollar bill. That became my first sale.

I moved from a hobby wire-car maker to a businessman. Allen, Prince and Kudakwashe became my business associates. They did the dirty work and I did the creative work. All the takings were given to my mother who would turn them into a loaf of bread for breakfast or a cooking oil for dinner. It was a win-win situation, except for Prince and Kudakwashe who did not dine at our house.

As the war ravaged in DRC, my wire-car business supplemented my mother’s monthly pension. With each wire-car sold, the reservoir of wires dwindled, Allen and his friends exhausted the neighborhood. Due to parental travel restrictions imposed on eleven year olds, they could not travel beyond Northinfill, just a mile radius.

For the first time, I ran out of ideas. Allen did not. After every sell, Prince would play with the buy and Kuda would watch from a distance. When the buyer goes inside their house for dinner, the three musketeers would pounce on the house and reacquire the merchandize, quietly. The shortest time a car took to come back after a sell was less than two hours.

“Amai Allen, can you believe the car I bought Tariro yesterday has been stolen? Who does that?”

As soon as they bring the wire-car, they would destroy it and straighten the wires. The next morning, another car would be available for sale. My mother never knew about this. It was a deep secret, only known by the four of us. For a while we kept the business afloat using the backhand tricks.

Nothing last for long, in ChiShona they say, chinobhururuka chinomhara-whatever flies will land. No, we were never caught. I just lost interest in making cars. I was into calligraphy.

My mother bought a placard inscribed Psalm 23 and I thought I could make something similar. I did. Without my mother knowing, I ripped apart the placard. It contained a card made from brown boxes, a white paper where the message was written and a clear wrapping paper. The only problem was writing using different font types.

After I perfected writing, I asked my partners in crime to look for brown boxes. Carefully, I cut the boxes into a letter sized cards. I took my Gideon’s Bible, I received two years back, and copied a proverb on a white paper. Using chewing gum, I stuck the white paper over the card. Prince or Kuda had Sellotape, so he lent me to tape the wrapping paper over the card. In less than an hour I had my placard.

“Where did you get this? This is very beautiful.”

My mother was amazed when she saw the placard. In no time, the placard was hung next to the family’s pictures. I was proud of myself. What my mother did not know was she had started another business venture. Soon enough, people were asking her where she got the placard. I began receiving orders from the women in the neighborhood.

But, calligraphy was never my passion, it was just one of those things you do while watching the clock or waiting for a break. My big break did come. One day, a certain guy came selling wire bikes. His design was unique, it had a wire man cycling and a drum with a string at the center which made a loud motorbike like sound. I felt challenged.

The man was good at marketing, he came at the right time when the kids were in the streets and mothers were catching up on the latest news. Women and kids thronged around him to watch his invention. I was among the crowd. Like a curious buyer, I held one of the bikes and pensively looked at it.

“I can make this,” I whispered to my mother.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes, there is nothing special about it. The motorbike sound is coming from the tension in the string.”

My mother was convinced, the only thing left was to persuade all the other women not to buy. She held a lot of influence in the community, so it was not that difficult. Before anyone could buy, she told the seller she did not have money at the moment, so he should come back the following week. Every mother said the same thing and they went back to prepare dinner.

The following day my mother went to a hardware store and bought about five meters of wire and a meter of electrical cables. She used the only money she had left. I was under a lot of pressure, but I knew I was going to deliver. Since the wire was made available, the three musketeers had no job, except watching me making the wire-bikes.

By the end of the day, Allen was pushing his wire-bike in the neighborhood, proud he was the first to own one. Prince’s mother bought one. My mother stood in the front yard and called all the neighbors to come and witness her son’s creation. The good news was the wire-bike was half the price the previous seller asked for. By the following day, my mother recovered all her money. The wire-bikes sold like hot cakes.

When the wire-bike seller came back at the end of the month, he found almost every kid with one. He could not believe his eyes, the bikes were an exact knockoff of his products, only better. He thought he had a monopoly over the market, but an aggressive competitor came along.

“Who made these wire-bikes?”

I am not sure what shocked him the most, losing a significant market share or a four feet four kid making the exact copy of his bike design.

I was back in business with no underhand dealings. My mother was the accountant and the advertising executive, she knew how to do her job. For a month or two, the sales from the wire-bikes supported my family. I was making good money a day. I felt like a big boy, although I was only fifteen.

After a while, every kid had a wire-bike and the fad ended. My family returned to its struggling ways and I turned back to books. A year later, my mother passed on and I stopped making wire cars except for my younger brother, Elton.

My son had never seen a wire car. On Mother’s Day, I decided to spoil him and make one for him. Unfortunately, I am living in the United States, and I do not know how to navigate the trash cans around here. The best I could only do was placed an order on Amazon.

On the next day, the order arrived right, a 24 and 18 gauge wire. Finally, I could make my son his first wire car. At three, he is old enough to have the keys to his first car, a handcrafted fire truck. Excited, I opened the package, the wires were too small. May be a 14 and 18 gauge could work. I was disappointed.

On Sunday morning, I took my son to Walmart. Online, Walmart said they had the 14 gauge wire in stock. After a thirty-minute bus ride, we walked about ten minutes to Walmart.

They were very few people at Walmart, which was a bit weird. With my son on a stroller, I headed straight the hardware department. Try the art and craft aisles, an attended advised. They did not have a 14 gauge wire, only a 20 gauge. I was disappointed, but I was not going to give up soon.

The closest home and goods improvement store was nearly half a mile away. Let us go to Lowe’s, I told my son. At Lowe’s, I did not want to waste any time and energy, so I asked the first attendant I met where to find 14 gauge wire. I was already tired of working and we had left home without taking breakfast. Go to lumber or electrical goods aisle, she said. The 14 gauge wire was not there, but I was not going to give up.

Aisle by aisle I searched. Tired and hungry, I finally asked another attendant. He directed me to aisle one. I had no idea what aisle one contained. In less than a minute, we found the treasured 14 gauge wire. It was a bit expensive, $8 including tax. I also bought a wire cutter at less than five bucks. Good hunting.

After a buying smoothies, strawberry and mango, we headed back home, after waiting twenty minutes for the bus. As soon as I got home, I cut two 1′ 2″ long 14 gauge wire. My son loves fire trucks, so I made the left side of the truck with one wire and the right side with the other. When my son saw the sides, he was excited thinking it was the final product, a mere 2-D model.

It was time to turn the 2-D into a 3-D model. To do that, I cut five three and half inches long 14 gauge wire. I made 90° bends on each end of the wires using a pair of pliers. These five beams joined the two shapes, by tying using the 18 gauge wire, to form the shell of the fire truck. Nothing could contain, my son’s joy when he saw what was coming up, a real fire truck.

For nearly two hours, I turned and tied the wires to make something that looked like a real fire truck. I took a short rest and watched basketball playoffs. After the game, I continued working on the fire truck. By the time I was done, my fingers were sore and my back aching, but my son was already in bed.

As I write, my son is preparing to go to preschool. I know it is going to be a battle because I left the fire truck on the table. He would rather play with his new car than go to preschool. When I get home my wife will give me some strong words, “You should have hid that car. Tino did not want to go to school after he saw it.”

Of course, I am not going to make money selling wire cars anymore, I am busy with my graduate studies. One thing I know, my son saw how much I love him.