Benjamin Franklin's father was a candle maker, a fact I learned in a college English course that covered the Colonial period of American literature.
My fascination with the process, however, began many years before that when our third-grade class made a trip to a place called the Log Cabin Village, where visitors got an authentic view of pioneer life back in the late 1800s. One of the things we learned about was candle making.
I was always amazed at the work that went into it, dipping the wicks in hot wax over and over again. The old lady, who looked like an extra from Little House on the Prairie, was so patient as she explained all of the work that went into candle making.
One of the things I remember thinking was how it was that people who lived a hundred years ago would have to use candles to read and keep their homes lit at night. In my eight-year old mind, having to do anything beyond flipping on a light switch to light up a room was inconceivable to me.
She also explained how candle making was considered a good profession back then, and that people would make a career out of it, working by themselves and selling to the local settlements. I have always had an interest in professions that technological advances have rendered obsolete, and while I know there are still people who make candles, it is not done in the same manner it once was.
I asked the lady several questions about how she knew when it was big enough and how it was made into the perfect cylinders we saw on the table laying next to her from the amorphous lump that was hanging from the wick she kept dipping into the hot wax. She told us that they had to be rolled and straightened and showed us how it was all done.
I have gone back to the Log Cabin Village many times, even as an adult, and while I love to tour the various cabins, which actually belonged to early settlers whose names still decorate the street signs of my city, I always find my self heading over to the candle making shop. I can still sit there for a long time and watch the candle maker work, and I still ask questions about it.
I do laugh about it sometimes when I think about what a pampered product of the technological age I have become, and at the same time, how I'm so fascinated with candle making. I don't know if it is because of the fact that I am so used to having what I want a few mouse clicks away, but I am pretty sure that it will be a life-long interest.