Nick Offerman Remembers the Farm Workshop That Shaped Him

Each week on NPR's "Wild Card," a guest draws a card from a deck and answers a big question about their life. Actor and author Nick Offerman is known for his acting, including an Emmy-nominated role this year in "Margo's Got Money Troubles." He is also a woodworker. The show asked him about a place that shaped him as much as any person did.

His answer was the workshop end of a big shed on his Uncle Dan's farm in Minooka, Illinois, where he grew up. His mother's family still farms corn and soybeans, and Uncle Dan became the family's big farmer, which was even his handle on a CB radio. The shed held tractors, combines and other farm machines, and at one end was "the shop," where all the tools were kept and where the family could fix almost anything. Offerman said it felt a bit like Han Solo and Chewbacca, since you never paid anyone to fix anything and never bought a new part if you could help it. Uncle Dan and his younger brother, Uncle Don, made new parts out of coffee cans, he said, like "incredible MacGyvers."

From them, he learned that you can change the world around you with tools and imagination, and that this is much cheaper than going to the mall, although sometimes more frustrating. Host Rachel Martin shared that her own grandfather, a potato farmer from Idaho, also made his own tools and even made spears for fun, treating his tools as art.

Offerman said he loves that side of human ingenuity. When he makes a canoe paddle, he enjoys shaping a plain piece of wood until he can feel how it will work. He has also made a felling axe from a single plank of mahogany, so the head and handle are one piece, and he says he loves just holding it, since it is basically a sculpture. Before that, he said, when he built decks and cabins in people's yards in Los Angeles, he realized that if he could put up a gazebo, he could also make a dining room table.

You can watch a longer conversation with him by searching for Wild Card with Rachel Martin on YouTube.