When I introduce myself and say I am a cooper, generally I get a blank stare.  At best, a look of feigned, but uncomprehending interest.   In the few seconds before I can explain, I can see the people’s minds questioning.  “A what? That term is familiar, but I don’t know what it is.”
A "cooper” is a maker of wooden barrels for wine, whiskey, or other commodities.  During my thirty years in the industry, I admit I was better at organizing and managing than actually crafting the barrels.  Nonetheless, those thirty years allowed me to experience the full range of cooperage activities: the building of, and utilization of barrels in wineries and distilleries; repairing used barrels; manufacturing and assembling large wine tanks; and travelling the world to see how all this cooperage was employed.  At the end of my cooper career, I wrote a book about the 2000-year-old story of barrels: Wood, Whiskey, and Wine: A History of Barrels.
  There are not many coopers in the world; perhaps a couple thousand.  This craft, way outside of the mainstream job market, was typical of the kind of activity and career choices I made; a gymnast in high school and college, attending a small university in Montana, becoming a submarine officer serving in the US Navy, for several years an outdoor education teacher, and then winding up as a cooper.  
Being a bit off the norm for a career path has its advantages: I tend to examine what is around us from a slightly different perspective.   A second book, The Shape of Wine: Its Packaging Evolution, is an example of this lateral thinking.  
  A third book is in the works (pardon the pun).  I’ll return to exploring the history of barrels by examining the numerous commodities, from the 1400s to current times, that were transported, aged, and contained in wooden barrels.  I'll let you know when it's published.