By Holly the Assistant
One of the young men in the family (pursuing hard science degree on the cheap, living at home) had the experience for the first time in his life of calling for a tow. I’m kind of amazed, given what he drives, that he hasn’t had to previously: mostly probably based on being cheap and sharing rides, someone else called the last several times. (The old beater decided that oil was better on the outside of the engine than inside. This is widely acknowledged as contrary to continued operation.)
Things you don’t know how to do til you do it.
We raised our kids pretty country. They all learned to shoot a gun, butcher small livestock and/or game, fish, cook, clean, garden . . . it’s how both of us grew up, on opposite sides of the world. A lot of people haven’t had the opportunity to have those experiences, to learn those skills, even poorly.
We could have a long discussion about what people should know how to do: Robert A. Heinlein put in Lazarus Long’s mouth the words “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” I suspect most of us are missing at least one off that list due to old injuries if nothing else.
But the bigger thing is that people don’t have a chance to try, and we live in a society that says “leave it to the experts” for most of those things, and makes it cheaper to have it done by someone else than to do it yourself. And for children, well, if you’re in class for seven to eight hours a day, followed by extracurriculars, no matter how good those extracurriculars are, you’re not going to have time to learn to do very many things. Especially if they are things that have a long lead time–you probably aren’t going to go down to the market and buy a live cockerel and take it home to butcher, at least, not in most of the USA today. You’ve got to buy a chick at the feed store and raise it for several months first. Which you do learn a good deal more from doing, but you’ve got to have the several months. Also most urban areas, I hear, frown on slaughtering in your front yard.
This is why we keep getting young folks who very much know things that just ain’t so. They know what they know from what they saw or heard, not from what they did, and they never were exposed to the actual things they’re hearing about or seeing at a nice, sterile, electronics mediated remove.
For us adults, there’s also not enough time in the day to do all the things. We might take a first aid class now and then, but we don’t practice the skills regularly. We might in theory know how to change oil but not have done it in the last four decades. It’s been a hot minute since I last messed with a spark plug, and I’d really rather pay someone to do that than try to figure out how the heck to get at them (I learned on a ’69 Chevy SUV, ok? It had a lot less stuff in the engine compartment).
The sum total of human knowledge is too great for one person to be able to even do it all as an amateur. If you tried, you’d never specialize enough in anything to make a living at it.
Let me encourage you to dust off an old skill or acquire a new one, though. It’s good for the brain, really, ask the neuroscientists, they get all enthusiastic. Several of my cello students took up music for exactly that reason. Maybe I’ll break out my spindle: I put it away when the first little someone figured out how to crawl and get into the wool, quite a while ago. It’s a nice, warm, indoors wintry sort of skill, and once upon a time I could even make even yarn. At this late date I’ll be starting over from vague memories and books. (Yes, I know there are you-tubes, no, my brain doesn’t work that way.)
What will you do?
Maybe don’t make it running a beater with the oil outside the engine, though? This one might get a touch pricey: we’ll find out next week if he pulled over fast enough or if we’re up for the learning experience of putting some other old beater’s engine into this old beater. It has been done before.
Spent enough time with old and new cars to realize sometimes God has a purpose in the “debacle” that only becomes evident years later. And yes, sometime the purpose is to get us to maintain the things we have. But now is not the time for stories of bad car choices from the late ’70s/early ’80s. I’m just glad he’s safe!!
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Daddy had to pull me and my ‘76 Monte Carlo home from 25 miles away when the timing chain broke. You can, in fact, steer a power steering without a running engine; but not easily. Used engine installed by mechanic.
Yeah, glad he’s ok.
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I suppose my main one is painting. I took it up because a lady at church offered to teach me, saying that it might help with my depression, and it’s definitely gotten interesting. I’ve enjoyed learning different techniques for oil, then branching out into acrylic and learning different techniques there. I’ve been working lately on moving from pure landscapes into scenes with animals, as well as portraits (of people I don’t know and will never meet, I hasten to add!)
The best part of it is that I have no gift for the visual arts, so unlike when I write, I don’t feel any pressure to make every painting up to professional standards. I just play with the images, and if something turns out looking pretty good, that’s a nice bonus!
I’ve also tried drawing, but that’s proven a lot harder, given how the “how-to” books all seem to move way too fast. (“No, I don’t want to know how to best arrange a bunch of apples to make an interesting still life. I’m still working on making it clear that this round thing I’m drawing is an apple and not an egg!”)
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At age 14, from cleaning cold-blooded fish with no problem to chopping the head off my first chicken… It was the warm blood that slowed me down. And then the bloody thing ran around like a chicken with it’s head cut off!!
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I think my own newly acquired skill is refinishing furniture … yes, I do wish that I had been able to take wood shop when I was in high school … but that was when shop classes were for boys and home ec for girls. (Sigh. I already KNEW how to cook and sew!) But I have watched enough informative and very helpful video series on Toob of Yew to sharpen the skills that I do have…
On the other hand – I am glad of knowing how to sew and tailor, although far from being an expert. I am skilled enough to tackle the very complicated Vintage Vogue designer patterns from the 30s and 40s, so I have that going for me…
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My first and only home-ec class, the teacher told us we were going to learn to make pancakes. I got out flour, sugar, bsking powder, and she asked me what I was doing.
Apparently you don’t make pancakes with ingredients, you follow the directions on a box. Just like you make spaghetti that comes out of a can.
I didn’t learn much. I swear I knrw more thsn the yescher.
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I earned social credit unending from the other girls in my class from knowing how to contrive baking powder biscuits from the staples that we had provided to us. Mixed, baked, served hot with butter and honey – also from the agricultural staples in the ec classroom.
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I spent a lot of time and money this year refurbishing the truck I custom-ordered from the factory 38 years ago for many more expected enjoyable miles. New paint, lighting, accessories, locks, AC, etc.
And then came last week’s hail storm.
The vehicle is still 99% operational (100% once the circular windshield crack is fixed), but the insurance bandits are pressuring me hard for it to be towed off and scrapped for a nominal payment.
No, you don’t do that to a family member who’s taken us to 48 states, even if it’s not human. And they’re mystified and irritated that I won’t just take the money and dump the “totaled wreck” as documented in their files.
Same thing with our Toyota “jellybean” we just painted a few weeks ago. On that car, the lumps, er, dimples from the 2″ ice saucers from 40,000 feet are slightly cute.
I’ve also been notified that even if I cancel the claims, that the vehicles are already categorized as “totaled-salvaged” – meaning future insurance will be very limited and appallingly expensive. Even if I don’t touch the titles or registrations or reject all payments.
Plus needing a new roof on the house & outbuildings.
Yes, I’m trying to keep this in perspective. No human is dead or crippled. It’s (mostly) just money. But it feels viscerally like organized theft.
And all this on one of the busiest weeks of my year.
Since the topic was older vehicles, I thought I’d vent.
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I’m learning basic Serbo-Croatian. In case I actually do get to the Iron Gates next summer.
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The little (273ci) V8 in my ‘68 Dart GT did not like cold mornings at all, and it did not have a manual choke, so there was a trick required to get the “automatic” choke to hold the flap all the way open so the thing would warm up and not stall at stop signs involving a strategically placed flathead screwdriver. If it did stall and I flooded it, the same screwdriver could be used with the air filter off to hold everything open in the carb and let it start.
The dual SU carbs on my ‘72 240Z had mixture adjustment screw adjustment thingies located on the bottom of each carb body, and in theory a metal tab that held them where you set them, but in practice they walked their way richer and richer over time from engine vibration until I had to worm my arm through underneath the carbs to where I could not see, adjust them all the way closed by feel, then turn twelve count on the adjustment thingees knobby protrusions the other direction to get it to run happily again.
Both of those first two cars had points to gap and distributors to set timing, and while both worked, both needed nearly continuous fiddling.
When I bought my first new car after college, only needing to do oil changes and check the tires occasionally, and count on the electronic ignition and fuel injection to make certain that it would start right away and run great every time with no drama, was pretty much a miracle. It freed up a lot of my weekend time.
While knowing I can fix stuff is nice to have in my bag of tricks, not having spend time fixing stuff every darned weekend was the first real modern technology instantiated phase change for me.
But having done nearly all the things (never had to drop a transmission by myself) does give a degree of confidence I can’t image being without.
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Fix a lawn mower, fix a transmission (it was a really simple repair, admittedly), chop down a tree, and most recently I repaired my furnace. A friend got this totally flummoxed look on his face when I told him that. Yes, my furnace. I have contacted or attempted to contact a number of different companies, and they either didn’t answer their phones or ghosted me. So I did it myself. It was supposed to freeze, and rather than freezing inside as well as outside, I solved the problem. Bite me.
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