.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} Once, when his children were young, John Ratzenberger built a shed. He assigned the kids the task of driving nails into some random two-by-fours. Then he installed those boards on the wall of the shed and announced that they had just created a place to hang the rakes.

It gets much more complicated, of course, but this gets to the fundamental part of his message. Get your kids away from the video games, teach them to work with their hands and, above all, don’t let them get the idea that manual labor is something to be scorned.

Otherwise, he says, we’re going to keep heading in the wrong direction. We’ll wind up with a serious lack of innovation and a total dependence on other countries to make the products we need. The United States is already losing its manufacturing base at a rapid pace, and Ratzenberger sees nothing but trouble coming from that.

He’s known for work that’s not exactly heavy lifting – playing Cliff Claven, the mail carrier, on the old “Cheers” TV series and providing the voice of Hamm, the piggy bank, in the “Toy Story” movies – so you wouldn’t expect Ratzenberger to be interested in something as prosaic as factory work.

But he sure is. He’s in the fifth season of hosting a Travel Channel series about manufacturing, “John Ratzenberger’s Made in America.” He’s working with the Alliance for American Manufacturing to present “town hall meetings” about the subject, like the one held here last week.

Through the “Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs Foundation,” he helped fund 20 “fabrication camps” last year, and hopes to multiply that to 200 next year. His “Discovery & Invention” event is scheduled to debut in November 2008.

You have to wonder, why is he so interested in this stuff?

His background explains a lot of it. Ratzenberger grew up in Bridgeport, Conn., where his dad drove a Texaco gasoline delivery truck and his mom worked in the Remington Arms plant. “I’ve been working since I was 9,” he said. That first job was sweeping the floor at a barber shop. Later, he cut leather hides for clothing makers, worked as a deckhand on a ship and “thanks to my high school industrial arts class” became a house framer.

Ratzenberger has Hollywood buddies now, but when he was growing up, “my heroes were factory workers.”

So he has taken it upon himself to make some noise about our transformation from can-do, common-sense, blue-collar workers to passive computer jockeys.

He brings a serious and even ticked-off attitude to this real-life role. “Both sides of the aisle have sold us out,” he said. “If the presidential candidates don’t listen, I think in the next election people are going to take the muskets off the walls.”

It’s hard to get him to acknowledge any middle ground. Ask him about the concept of globalization, and he says, “We’re building the middle class in China and India,” and eventually, “why will China need us?”

What about our low rate of unemployment? Doesn’t that suggest that we’re making a healthy transition to a service economy?

“But what are the jobs?” Ratzenberger said. If high-paying welding jobs go unfilled while low-paying clerical jobs are snapped up, that might not be progress. If “both parents have to work at lousy jobs,” he doesn’t see that as anything to brag about.

Can you blame people for buying the cheapest goods available, even if they’re made in China? It’s not that simple, he says. Your taxes go up because of the loss of the U.S. manufacturing base, and so “those Chinese products at Wal-Mart aren’t cheaper,” he said. “They’re more expensive.”

And he relentlessly ties his theme to the bigger picture.

When a Mattel Inc. official apologized to China about toy recalls, and when Russian President Vladimir Putin recently treated U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a dismissive manner, Ratzenberger saw connections to his cause. “As soon as we lose our manufacturing base, we cease to be a strong nation,” he said. “Other countries are starting to dictate to us.”

As Cliff Claven, he spent 11 years issuing opinions at an imaginary bar. Turns out the guy was just warming up.