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    Today’s Machining WorldToday’s Machining World
    Home»Swarfblog»Wonderfully Old School
    Swarfblog

    Wonderfully Old School

    Lloyd GraffBy Lloyd GraffOctober 23, 2025Updated:October 23, 2025No Comments4 Mins Read
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    I am writing this blog longhand because words flow better for me straight from my brain to the paper. Very old school.

    Today I ordered three one-pound bags of dried Blenheim apricots (not the tasteless Turkish kind) from an orchard owner named Gilbert Gibson who owns Gibson Farms in Hollister, California. Blenheims are seldom grown anymore, but thrive in a small area around Hollister.

    For full flavor, the apricots are cut in half by hand and sun-dried until they reach peak sweetness.

    Not only does Gibson’s produce great apricots and walnuts, but they sell them themselves at the Palo Alto downtown farmer’s market where I visit them when I’m in town.

    Besides selling a variety of apricots which are becoming rare, they also refuse to take credit cards. After this shipment Gilbert Gibson will send a handwritten invoice by mail. I am obliged to send a check after the apricots arrive. So “old school” but I love it.

    Another throwback to a better day is Bruce Hengel of Vancouver, Washington, who replaced the lenses in 2 pairs of reading glasses I had bought many years ago from a company named Fetch, that gives its profits to animal rescue efforts. They recommended Bruce to me.

    I sent my two pairs of glasses to him plus a pair of $500 glasses I had bought locally from an optometrist that fell apart without me using them much. They refused to repair them. Bruce fixed all three pairs, sent them back to me by mail for $42, paid by check after I had received them and tried them out.

    * * *

    The NBA started its regular season games Tuesday. One thing we will not be seeing is the old school and very effective underhand method of shooting free throws, even though there are some guys who are awful “at the line.”

    Two of the greatest free throw shooters in the history of the game, Rick Barry and Dolph Schayes, shot with both hands, underhand from below their knees. In the 1978–79 season Barry shot 94.7% on his free throws.

    His career percentage was a hair below 90% over 15 years, all “granny style.”

    Wilt Chamberlain, one of the all-time greats of the game, was a terrible free throw shooter. Over his career, he missed half of his attempts but for one year, after Barry’s tutelage and pestering, he shot 61.3%. In his legendary 100-point game he was 28 of 32 from the line, but then gave up shooting underhand because “it made him feel like a sissy,” as he wrote in his autobiography. He then regressed back to shooting 50%.

    * * *

    On Friday the World Series begins for 2025 between the LA Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays. If any sport besides horseracing or rodeo is “old school,” it is the National Pastime.

    The greatest star, perhaps in the game’s history, Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers, will be doing his thing. He’s the foremost hitter in the game, perhaps the most dominant pitcher and a top base stealer.

    Babe Ruth started as a pitcher, then gave it up, but not Ohtani. When he signed his first major-league contract with the L.A. Angels, he demanded that he would pitch as well as hit.

    The late Robert Redford’s character in The Natural was also a natural 2-way player like Ruth and Ohtani. Unfortunately, as far as we know, Ohtani did not carve out his own bat as a kid from a tree that was struck by lightning and name it “Wonderboy.” That was truly “old school!”

    As I think about how this might be applied to the machine tool business, my mind wanders to IMTS. What if Haas or Mazak or an upstart said, “Bring your drawing and a piece of material, and we will program our machine and make the item right in front of you.” 

    If they could do it the customer might write them a check on the spot.

    That would demonstrate that they “really knew their apricots” and applications.

    Question: What is something old school that you embrace?

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    Lloyd Graff

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