Posts Tagged ‘pocket knife’
Christmas Camel For Kids Photos by Samuel E. Warren Jr.
Christmas Camel
by Samuel E. Warren Jr.
Ranilo came home with the school assignment to carve a camel for a Christmas decoration to take to school.
My Uncle Richard DeLong had “whittled” a wooden horse for my mother, when she was a little girl. My Uncle Hobert DeLong would sit on the porch with a piece of wood and his sharp pocket knife and whittle out wooden figures and toys.
Christy, my wife, turned to me and asked,”You can draw a picture of a camel that Ranilo can use to carve the camel; right ?”
I grinned and hesitated. “I can draw anything I put my mind to. But, first, I have to get the image in my mind. I grew up in the Ozarks; not Saudi Arabia. I had no earthly idea at the moment what a camel looked like.”
I nodded at Christy. “Probably.” Then, I mumbled, “Give me a moment to try and remember what a camel is suppose to look like.”
My mind drew an absolute blank. In my mind’s eye, I imagined a distant silhouette, but, not clear enough to draw on paper. Internet time ! I fired up the laptop and used the search engines to browse camel clip art and camel line art. The artwork I found was extremely “kiddish” and heavily emphasized cartoons.
I found a photo on Wikipedia, but not enough of an image to give me a head to toe and front to back view of a camel.
I finally found one piece of artwork, that showed a camel lying down that seemed close enough to the “Real World” image hidden in the back corner of the Morgue Of My Mind. I sketched out the image on paper and gave it to Ranilo.
I turned and sitting on the table, beside where I stood, sat a ceramic Christmas camel in “The Nativity Scene.”
I stepped inside, picked up the Nikon D 100 and a white Ozarks dish towel. I stepped outside picked up a bamboo end table and the ceramic camel and strolled out into the sunlight. I put the camel down on the dish towel background and realized that other kids might have teachers that wanted them to draw or create some artistic version of a camel. A photo is crucial to help fill in those vague image gaps of memory.
While I took photos of the ceramic camel, I thought, “A camel looks like a horse that could use a talented plastic surgeon.”
Sam
samwarren55
