If you’ve ever seen “The Red Green Show”, you know that Red Green is this crazy Canadian who, among other things, builds amazing things out of old parts and duct tape.
These are just a few of the things Red has done using “The handyman’s secret weapon, duct tape” – a jet-powered car using a fire extinguisher; a reclining chair out of an old stove, an adjustable bed out of a ping-pong table, and a moped out of a bike and a chain saw. If you have never seen “The Red Green Show”, you have missed out on life.
At any rate, when I read recently that Ford Motor Company is now using parts from the F-150 pickup to design respirators for the fight against coronavirus, I thought “Holy Cow! Red Green is working for Ford!”
But luckily, I was wrong. Ford is actually having some pretty good success building respirators for first responders to wear that filters their air. It’s made from a fan which was normally used for ventilated seats on the F-150, plus HEPA filters and power tool batteries. The only thing they are not using is duct tape!

So I got to thinking. Farmers are pretty much doing their thing these days, getting ready to farm. But lots of other people have lots of time on their hands. Why wouldn’t the government put them to work inventing things to help the cause?
You could make your own respirator with a big air filter, a vacuum hose and duct tape! Or maybe a touchless faucet out of a holey garden hose! The possibilities are endless!
Or maybe you are bored with cooking the same old things, but your grill is dead as a doorknob. Use that good ol’ American ingenuity and build your own grill! You could use the front grill of a car or truck or tractor, or just use a nice piece of expanded metal and big fire. If there are kids around, get them to help you! It could be a great family project.
The point is, people are getting tired of all this, and they are getting restless. And you know what happens when kids (or grownups) get restless with lots of time on their hands. They get creative. They get reckless. They do crazy things just to see what would happen.
Safety factors aside, the government had better turn people loose soon or they are going to have a whole nation of crazy inventors on their hands.
We might be living in perilous times, but having a bunch of people inventing things out of car parts and old toasters would be much more perilous. On the other hand, the stock price for Duct Tape would go through the roof!