How we learned to fix things

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

By chance, I came upon “Inside Hook,” an online version of the old “Esquire”, a paean to self-indulgence. Jumping out was Tanner Garrity’s, “Dad didn’t need a Taskrabbit. My dad fixed his car engine with a Pepsi can. I complain to Claude about my leaky faucet. What happened to men?”

Well, I’ll tell you. First, what’s a “Taskrabbit”? I dug around for that one. Simply, it’s hiring someone to do what you can’t even do when you should know how. Gen-Z has collapsed in the face of a dripping faucet. Garrity can’t get the super to fix the kitchen faucet, and he can’t do it himself. Some things are needlessly complicated, like a computer chip replacing a dip stick; this isn’t one of them. Pliers please. Garrity is one long kvetch on generational incompetence. “So, learn,” he ought to have been told.

I was a privileged kid, as far as learning how to do things. We were expected to. In 7^th & 8^th grade at PS 104, Brooklyn, we took shop under the watchful eye of Mr. Marinello (adults only had three first names—Mr., Mrs., or Miss) who showed us basic woodworking: how to use a block plane, or a rip, cross-cut, or coping saw, the difference between a Phillips and regular screwdriver, the mystery of the Miter Box. We also sat through half a semester of home economics exploring the varieties of cooking the potato, as girls endured a half semester of shop, discovering the workings of the rabbit plane. Life’s practical side would not be terra incognita. I still have more use for knowing how to use a countersink than algebra. In high school, I took drafting as an elective; I still have my T-Square, angles, and antique Keuffel and Esser drafting set passed down to me by my father, who got it from his uncle.

I had a bonus: my grandmother’s workmen. I mostly remember Jake Sanders, who came from Germany either before or right after WW I. He was a roofer by trade, but thanks to the German trade school system, Jake could fix anything. I learned how to wrap lamp wick around screw threads to make a tight fit or make up for stripped threads. When you needed Jake, you left a message, and he’d appear, usually on Saturday, when my grandmother had the big family dinner to which her workmen were always invited. Jake was quite hard of hearing and shouted everything. He was a bachelor; no one knew anything about his private existence except that he did work for the local 7-Up distributor.

My grandfather’s tools and workbench were in the garage cellar with its dirt floor and tree trunk supports holding the garage floor up. It was a treasure trove of mysterious objects: large wooden planes, vises, and a WW I Austrian army M95 Steyr rifle. There were dusty boxes of screws, bolts, nuts, and nails, and shavings so far back that nothing had been touched in decades. When Daily’s hardware up the street didn’t have what Pop needed, and I reported back empty-handed, he asked, “Did you go to Rob Wahl?” I had never heard of Wahl’s. Duly chastised and with directions, my 10-year-old self trooped off to Wahl’s. Wahl’s hardware was in an old 19th-century three-story building on a spit of a street, which might not even exist anymore. It looked like a haunted house. Pushing the creaking wooden door open, its paint long faded, I found Aladdin’s cave. It was ramshackle; the place had never been cleaned, and single bulbs hung from dust-coated, ancient gas fixtures. No signs, but Wahl knew where everything was. No one knew anything about him except that he was always there; if no one had it, he did.

Home on summer break from grad school, I decided to paint the tin cornice over the garage, a bigger job than I bargained for. The two quadrahedra above the corbels were rusted beyond repair. I got out the drafting tools, made paper models, cut tin for new ones using Pop’s tin snips and his old-fashioned soldering iron, which I heated on the kitchen stove’s gas burner to solder them. I used a dental pick to dig out decades of paint embedded in the acanthus leaf of the corbels. Then the galvanized cornice had to be washed down with vinegar to neutralize the acid, which would have prevented the paint from adhering. Our neighbor, Mr. Gillespie, told me that one. I was up on the ladder when a passing wise guy made the smart remark: “What if I pull this ladder?” I fired back, “What if I pour this paint on your head?” Mr. Gillispie, who had been watching, was laughing. Gravity has not been repealed. I still use my grandfather’s Allegator Wrench to loosen nuts. The wrench has an open jaw, a gripper on one side, flat on the other. On the handle, it read “Roebling Tool Company, Trenton, New Jersey,” the folks who built the Brooklyn Bridge. I see the wrench in antique shops as a decoration; they don’t know what it’s for.

From my father (and remembering Mr. Marinello), I refinished Dad’s small mahogany Jacobean replica gate leg table (it had been my grandmother’s). I sanded the top down to the base, stained, and varnished the piece. Turned out pretty good. Would have cost a fortune to have it done.

Jake Sanders on plumbing came in handy in Kuwait and Baghdad when I had to replace a pipe and fix a faucet in our quarters, not the usual task for a field-grade officer. If you don’t know simple repairs, you’ll be up the creek or pay through the nose. My landlady at Ohio State told my girlfriend she should marry me because I could fix things. Karen didn’t, but I can still wire a plug or hang a chandelier.

DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW

Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!

Success! Thank you for donating. Please share BPR content to help combat the lies.

About
Latest Posts

William Layer

Lt. Colonel Civil Affairs, USAR (ret) served twenty-six years in the regular and reserve components of the US Army. He was civil military liaison for the 260th Military Police, DC National Guard, State Public Affairs Officer, Commander of the Public Affairs unit and a counter-drug intelligence analyst. Transferring to the 352 Civil Affairs Command as monuments and archives officer, he became the Command Public Affairs Officer in Iraq as well as liaison to local Iraqi leaders and acting Secretary to the General Staff. He was instrumental in recovering photographic artifacts of the Iraqi Royal family while in Baghdad. He was wounded in action in an ambush in Feb. 2004 for which he was awarded the Purple Heart.
In his civilian career he worked primarily in Army Public Affairs and for the Air Force as historian to the presidential wing in the early Reagan administration and later for Air Force Legislative Liaison covering congressional hearings and assisting in preparing testimony for senior leaders.
His essays and reviews have appeared in the scholarly and popular press including Asian Affairs and the Washington Times. He is co-author, with Ali Wahab, of The Iraqi Royal Family, a Collection of Photographs Recovered from The Ruins of the Zuhur Palace, 2004.
A native New Yorker, he holds a BA with honors in history from Findlay College (Ohio) and an MA in history from The Ohio State University. He is a graduate of the US Army Command & General Staff College and was graduated with distinction US Naval War College with a MA in National Security and Strategic Studies.