A Three Tree Point man's idea may take him to the top in the hottest new show on television.

Jerry Robinson, Times/News publisher, was only trying to make his wife comfortable, but his efforts may pay off if he wins the grand prize on "America's Greatest Inventions."

Only 12 finalists will share the stage in the show's finale, but the symptoms of their original affliction are familiar to every workshop widow whose husband ever said, "Honey, I'll be out in the garage."

First there's an hour of silence. Then an hour of hammering, sawing, slamming, and yelling.

Then, like a 5-year-old presenting his first dandelion to Mom, the beaming boy returns holding, you guessed it:

* a wooden wingding that looks like a flying saucer but keeps

bologna from turning green in the fridge

* a flexible aluminum doo-hickey that removes hair from the bathtub

drain

* a spring-loaded cookie jar, or

*maybe a FussBank.

Yep. If your wife is so tiny she still gets into the movies for a dime, and her feet fall asleep on road trips to Sequim, the Fussbank naturally comes to mind during those 10-minute stops at roadside parks where she can get her circulation going again.

That's how it happened to Jerry Robinson of Burien, who walked out to his workshop one Sunday morning 10 years ago.

Using a tablesaw, a router, some scrap wood and some stain left over from his deck, Robinson whacked and sawed and sanded until he had something that looks like the portable footstools he used to see on the streets of Portland, Oregon in the Depression.

Shoeshine boys carried them around, dropped to their knees on the sidewalks and polished the shoes of businessmen for 25 cents.

Seven inches high and 10 inches wide, the FussBank sits in the well under the glove compartment in your car, where a tiny woman normally sticks her feet. By resting her feet on the FussBank ("footbench in German) she avoids a condition known in Robinson's house as "sleepytoes," which sometimes causes you to feel like you are wearing a 40-pound anvil on your ankle.

It takes up about as much room as box of Kleenex . In fact, you could even store a box of Kleenex under it, says Robinson.

"We tested several prototypes," he says. "This one is light enough to be switched from car to car, and heavy enough that it doesn't tip over every time you turn into a department store parking lot."

Sounding like a lot of the other wannabe geniuses who appear regularly on television, Robinson raves about the difference in his wife's demeanor since he presented her with his invention.

"She used to grumble about how her feet don't reach the ground in most American cars," Robinson declared. She grew up in Germany, and she's about the size of Sleepy, Sneezie, or Bashful, so the Volkswagen was just right. But put her in a Buick and she's like a toddler in a papa chair."

Robinson figured he wasn't the only guy whose wife felt like her feet were hanging over a cliff. So he tried the usual interim remedies--a big dictionary (it was heavy), a soccer ball (it wobbled), and a pillow (it got dirty.)

"That's when it hit me," he says. "She needed something solid like a church pew and portable like a toolbox. Now, when we take a long drive, she feels like a Princess on a parade float. She really likes it."

His wife, Elsbeth (born in Bochum, Germany) rolls her eyes in the tolerant way the wives of inventors generally develop.

"He'd be out there, anyway," she says. "Might as well be useful. Otherwise, he'll be coming in every day with something dumb."

She says the FussBank is alright, but wonders what the world would think of his golf ball bird.

Made from an old watering can, it tips over every 30 seconds to lay a golf ball on a Velcro pad where Robinson can whack it.

"I got the idea from those toothpick birds we used to have on the kitchen table," he says.

Or the "Peanut Buster," which looks like an ordinary pencil sharpener, but has a slot in the top where you drop a peanut.

Turn the handle one crank to the right, then back to the left, and your peanut is ready to open and eat.

"That one didn't work out so well," says Robinson. "Made a mess on the end table."

Or the Soap Hat. Similar to a device popular at fraternities that delivers beer through a tube attached to a small keg held in the top of a cowboy hat, Robinson's Soap Hat has a strap that fits under the chin, wrapping the head of the wearer, and connected to a plastic tub that holds about a cup of liquid bath soap.

Open your mouth and it activates a plunger that sends a teaspoon of soap

onto your chest.

"I got that idea while staring at a fish tank one day," he says. "I saw all those bubbles from the aerator and it just came to me in a flash. It couldn't be electric, so I had to make it jaw-operated. I still think that idea was worth something, but my neighbor tried it and all the soap fell out when he was washing his feet."

According to the producer's of America's Greatest Inventorst, "Mr. Robinson pestered us for a year before we finally accepted his application. "They wouldn't have put him on the show, says Dominic Venturi "But my wife, Vicki, heard me talking to him on the phone. She's four-foot, eight and she just loves the idea."

Robinson may not win the big prize, but Venturi has already bought five FussBanks for Vicki..