The Tools

In my prior post I said I was going to starting describing the "cast of characters" in Argyle... Yeah - those are not the "tools" I'm referring to in the title :-) ... I've decided to write about a different topic near and dear to my heart:

In the 4th drawer down in the top section of the roll-around toolbox in my shop you'll find a small red metal box (it currently contains some taps and dies). And if you poke around some more in the various drawers you'll find a ratchet and sockets that say "Husky" on them and some box/open wrenches that are marked "Proto Challenger"... The "Husky" tools originally came in that red box and I bought them together with the Proto wrenches shortly after we moved to Argyle. They were my very first mechanic's tools...

I still remember the day I got them. I took them out and examined them... Held them in my hands - felt the heft and the balance - caressed the cold steel... They represented something that I had always longed for but had never possessed. The power to restore life to the broken and discarded... To repair and improve...

Many of those tools have gotten misplaced over the past 40 years but the ones that remain are among my most prized possessions. At some point they have touched almost every vehicle I've ever owned - and many others... Back in the day they were even used to replace the timing chain on a friend's 65 Mustang GT 2+2 fastback with the pony interior and a K-code (high performance) 289 engine... (BTW: I could have bought that car for $300 before I offered to help the owner fix it.)

Throughout my entire adult life working on cars has been my comfort and my refuge - and those particular tools are the glue that binds it all together... So - when I'm dead and gone I hope you remember the significance and don't just toss them out... Well - I guess it doesn't really matter - I won't care :-)

Aside: This topic reminds me of something I started wondering about when I was 12 years old. (The "trigger" was seeing the massive printing press at the Philadelphia Inquirer on a field trip)... Here goes: All of society's machines were made using other machines that were made by other machines, etc, etc - forming an unbroken chain that goes back hundreds of years to the start of the industrial revolution... So - what if all of our machines were destroyed? ... Could we actually recreate the technology? Do we really know how? How long would it take? Would society ever be the same? Would we want it to be the same?
Yeah -those were the kinds of things I contemplated when I wasn't paying attention in class... And rightfully so - they were far more entertaining than whatever the heck the teacher was rambling on about :-)

And back to the story:

Of course, tools are worthless unless you know what to do with them, and that's where serendipity comes in:
Behind the rental house in Argyle was a little shed, and in that shed was a shelf containing a collection of hardbound Chiltons repair manuals covering almost every American vehicle made within the past 20 years...
Yes - I was in heaven! ... I spent countless hours poring over those books - not just learning the repair procedures but figuring out what was (and was not) different from model to model, make to make and from year to year... I quickly began to grasp the underlying principles and philosophies. And once you understand those you can fix anything.

BTW: Here's a picture of the back yard of the house in Argyle:

The Cadillac was mom's company car and the white car was my '63 Fairlane. In the background is the shed with the repair manuals and you can see bits and pieces of the landlord's submarine near the fence...

Next: Having the tools and knowing what to do with them is not the same as being able to do it. That takes practice. Seriously! It's almost painful watching someone use a wrench or a socket for the first time. Here's the problem: The tool is used to apply rotational force to a bolt, and unless the force is oriented correctly relative to the axis of the bolt the tool will slip, possibly rounding the bolt head and almost certainly resulting in a hand injury.
Furthermore - bolts are frequently are at odd angles and are difficult to reach and sometimes you can't even see them -you have to work by feel. Getting the tool correctly aligned and applying the force in just the right manner is a significant challenge, and no matter how good you are the wrench is still going to slip from time to time... Of course, one of Murphy's Corollaries says that whenever a tool slips there will be a sharp metal edge directly in the path of your hand. I refer to it as the "blood sacrifice" and I consider to be a favorable omen :-)

BTW: Another one of Murphy's Corollaries says that any object dropped while working on a car will come to rest under the exact center of the chassis. I have verified this to be true countless times...

You know - as an aspiring young musician I used to regard my hands as delicate instruments... That was before I got those tools. My hands have been accumulating scars ever since. And I still remember when I got most of them :-)
For example, I got the one on my left thumb while pulling the front seat from a Dodge Super Bee in a wrecking yard in Seaside, Oregon during a rainstorm in the late 1990s. It had been flooding and I was lying on my side in almost a foot of water reaching under the car pulling on a wrench when the bolt broke...
And the scar on the left knuckle of my right hand? I was hammering the drive shaft out of a tiller with a mini-sledge back in 1980 when I missed... But I digress...

I have to chuckle when I think back to my early repair attempts - like replacing the muffler on my Fairlane: The book made it sound dead simple. Just few bolts and a couple of clamps... However - the book didn't mention that it would all be rusted together and you pretty much need an oxy-acetylene torch to get it apart... After hours of frustration I threw in the towel and took it to a mechanic :-)

But I never stopped trying and I never stopped learning - and the rest is history... My history :-)