Scotty

A while back I told the story of trying (and failing) to replace the muffler on my '63 Fairlane. So I ended up taking it to the closest place that had a mechanic. That was Joe Snow's Conoco station on 377 just south of Denton. (It was on the right just past the train underpass - been gone for a long time now.) And that's where I met Scotty, the redneck Italian-American mechanic from the Bronx...

Scotty (that was his nickname) was a what you'd call a "piece of work". He was on the short side (about 5'6") and was exactly what you'd expect of an Italian-American from New York. He had the hair, the accent, and the attitude - with a little bit of "short man complex" thrown in :-)

Yes - Scotty had one heck of a mouth on him... His remarks were usually pretty funny - but not always. Like when he talked about wishing that the south had won the civil war so he could own a slave... I think it was supposed to be funny because he was a "Yankee", but it was still not cool...
And he used to make rude comments about his wife's figure too... Granted - she was built like Olive Oyl - and he always made it clear that he loved her - but still... (She worked at the nearby brick plant and stopped by frequently.)

Eventually I started hanging out at the station to watch Scotty work. Now - I suspect that lot of mechanics would have been annoyed by my incessant questions but Scotty actually seemed to enjoy having someone to "mentor".
And when my '63 Fairlane needed a valve job Joe (the station owner) was nice enough to let me do the work myself in the lot next to the station (he sold used cars there) so I could bother Scotty when I needed advice... Of course, I did help out by pumping gas when Scotty was busy, but it was still a really nice thing for Joe to do...

Aside: I think Scotty had some idea how sharp I was, but Joe always treated me like I was as dumb as a bag of hammers... I can't say I blame him. I hadn't really gotten a handle on that whole "common sense" thing yet... But back to the Fairlane:

I was able to get the carb, intake, exhaust manifolds and valve covers off without too much trouble, but then I tried to get the head bolts off using my 3/8" drive ratchet... Now, anyone who does mechanical work is laughing right now because you know it's all but impossible to apply enough force to a short ratchet to break a head bolt loose. And when Scotty saw what I was up to he kind of chuckled and brought me a 2 ft long breaker bar and a 1/2" drive socket... I had not known such tools existed. It was quite the revelation - made things so much easier :-)
Scotty also showed me how to get all the gasket surfaces clean, and how to torque the head bolts and adjust the lifters. And, most important of all, he taught me about Permatex #2 Sealant.

Another aside: Permatex currently makes about 30 different types of gasket sealer and I have no idea why. Most of the newer ones are silicone based and they tend to deteriorate and peel and generally muck things up... Permatex #2, on the other hand, is impervious to gas and oil, never hardens, never leaks, and it's cheaper than most of the "modern" sealers. I've used it on almost everything (there are exceptions) for the past 40 years and it has never let me down... Yeah - sometimes "old school" is just plain better :-)

When Scotty decided to rebuild the high performance 389 engine in his 1960 Pontiac Catalina convertible I was over there every day - picked up all kinds of little tips and tricks... Most have served me well over the years but a few haven't, like Scotty's special mixture of STP and 10W40 that he used as an assembly lube. It works great on most things but if you use it on modern moly-coated rings they won't seat properly. (Found that out the hard way.) But I still learned an awful lot from him.

OK - this was kind of funny: Whenever Joe left the station Scotty would grab the keys to the pop machine and get us each a free bottle of Coke. Then we'd drink a toast to Joe for being such a generous guy when he wasn't around... Well, I thought it was funny...

I'm not sure what became of Scotty. He and Joe had a falling out in late 1971 and he ended up working at the station at the southeast corner of 377 and I35E. I wasn't really welcome there (probably because of my long hair) - then life got a lot more complicated and I hardly ever saw Scotty after that...

Yeah - he's another one on that long list of people I never really said "Thanks" to... I owe him big time...