My uncle Vint was a mechanic who worked on almost any sort of engine. He was also a very wise man in other ways. Once when I was visiting him and his family we went to a roller-rink for the evening. The rink had a series of small hills built into one of its corners. It looked like fun and I made my way toward it. Vint saw me, shook both his head and his forefinger at me. After I saw what happened to those kids who tried the hill, I realized that it was just for experts. I was grateful for Uncle Vint’s warning.
Another time, when I was but 6 and had locked myself out of our apartment house while trying to collect the Sunday morning paper, I was dressed in nothing but underpants and it was 5 AM, I was in what they call “dire straits”. Lo and behold, along came Uncle Vint driving a street sweeper, and coming to my rescue. He took me into the truck and we drove to the nearest all-night café from which he called my mother and got her to meet us at the apartment building door. Once again Uncle Vint to the rescue.
But Vint was also able to take his mechanic skills abroad, spending a year in North Africa and another on the Alaska Pipeline as a mechanic specialist. I was also told that he had actually invented a special bulldozer blade for which he was well-known in the business. When my sixth-grade class visited a near-bye logging operation way up on a mountaintop, there was Uncle Vint, running the donkey engine that hauled the logs up the hill to be put on the trucks and hauled to town.
The experience when I learned the most from Uncle Vint involved fixing my own car engine. I had been told the “head gasket” was broken and it would need to be replaced at the tune of $200. When I called Vint about it he said “Bring It to my shop.” At the time he was running a boat mechanic shop on Lake Union in Seattle. When I got there, he handed me a wrench and said “Loosen those six bolts there on the top sides of the engine and call me.” After I had done that he handed me a rag and then used a hoist to lift the top half of the engine off.
“Use the rag to clean off all the excess oil and then go down to the parts shop and buy a “Head seal”. I did this straight way. The flat cork seal cost $1.50. Vint then removed the old seal, which had a split in it, placed the new one in place between the top and bottom parts of the engine, and said: “Clean it up and call me.” When I called him a few minutes later he used his hoist to lower the top half of the engine in place. “Tighten these six bolts and call me”, Vint said. When I called him, he said: “You are good to go. You have replaced your own head gasket and it cost you nothing”, accompanied with a big smile.
I was flabbergasted by the fact that I had done this entire $200 job by myself and it had cost me next to nothing.
Another time a mechanic had told me that my fuel system was leaking somewhere and it would cost several hundred dollars to find the leak. I called Vint and told him what the fellow had said. Vint asked: “How much gas does your car use?” I replied that it used about a tank a week. “What does it cost to fill it? Vint asked. I replied “About five dollars” (those were the days, 1960s). Vint said “You do the math.” And then he said “Have a great day, Jerry.”
I did the math. At five dollars a tank it would take nearly a year for me to the spend the $200 I would have spent getting the mechanic to find the leak. The car continued to leak gas at a pretty steady rate, but no worse, until I sold it several months later. Once again, my Uncle Vint had saved me a lot of trouble and money by helping me think through the problem on my own. Moreover, he had actually increased my knowledge of how cars work and what it should really cost to fix them. And at least once I had done the work myself !! I would like to think I may have learned something about how to be a teacher from my Uncle Vint.