MODERN LIVING: The Shoulder Trade

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Cooks & Cats. In addition, there are 100 "How To" magazines, and in New York City's public library there are 3,500 how-to books, 250 on cooking alone, both for the gourmet (Escoffier Cook Book) and the not-so-rich and not-so-particular (The Can-Opener Cookbook). Gardeners can pore over Perennials Preferred, Rockeries, Principles of Weed Control, animal lovers over such volumes as How to Tempt a Fish, How to Live with a Cat. There are dozens of books on How to Buy a House and how to make it better. There is even one on How to Make Sense.

To do-it-yourself buffs, there are few projects too difficult to try. Examples:

> In Pleasantville, N.Y., the Easi-Bilt Patterns Co. puts out nine different blueprints for do-it-yourself home builders. Since the war it has sold 250,000 plans, estimates that 70,000 of its do-it-yourself customers have managed to build their own homes.

> In Milwaukee, a Korean war flyer named Paul Poberezny formed the Experimental Aircraft Association for do-it yourself flyers to make their own airplanes. So far, the group has 600 members spread around the U.S. who have flown 500 of their creations. One man is working on a combination plane and car with a pusher propeller and folding wings; another hopes to sell a do-it-yourself small plane kit for $1,000.

>In Los Angeles, dozens of hot-rod clubs build their own sports cars out of junk-heap jalopies fitted with souped-up, modern engines. Some of the youngsters take surplus airplane-wing fuel tanks and turn them into 170 m.p.h. racers for speed trials on Utah's Bonneville salt flats; others build elaborate racing cars with Fiberglas bodies and 300-h.p. power plants (often with two engines hooked together) that can do up to 240 m.p.h.

> In Northfield, NJ. (pop. 3,500), Mayor G. L. Infield thought bids to paint the City Hall were too high. So His Honor and 23 councilmen and citizens rolled up their sleeves, wangled free paint, and did the job themselves. Cost: $30 (for beer), a saving of $1,470.

How It Began. The great postwar hobby got much of its start from the war itself. During their service years, millions of Americans learned for the first time how to repair radios, engines and dozens of other machines. Housewives who had been punch-press operators, welders and electronics technicians found that it was no trick to fix a leaky faucet or paper a room, especially as it was hard to hire anyone to do it. Doing it herself was also less expensive, since the wages of carpenters and plumbers had jumped far higher than those of many other workers. Says one do-it-yourselfer: "A $1.25-an-hour bookkeeper is not going to pay a $3.50-an-hour carpenter very long."