The high-school shop teacher is becoming an endangered species, a victim of the creeping intellectualization of our culture. She has a master's degree in Communications. The coming generation will learn how to cut wood, join pipes or tile walls by attending Home Depot classes. In taking over this area of education, the company is extending its reach from the commercial sphere to the borders of the spiritual. Surely more people find inner peace working with their hands than do so working with their brains.
Man is a tool-using animal, and the instinct to saw, sand, weld and fix goes very deep.
Literary folk are by no means immune from the D.I.Y. bug. Thoreau was, of course, a consummate handyman, though not a lucky one. However, he left it all lying by the pond, and the hardware was stolen. George Orwell was luckier but less skillful. A keen amateur carpenter, during WW2 he wanted to put up some bookshelves but couldn't get the wood because of wartime rationing.