There was a time when Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase saw President Abraham Lincoln shining his own pair of shoes in his office at the White House. Secretary Chase asked, "Mr. President, why are you blacking your own shoes?" Lincoln responded to him in his own clever wisdom, "Whose shoes would you have me black, Mr. Secretary?"
I try to remember this little story when I tackle odd projects in my life. I feel a great deal of satisfaction with the act of creating things. And by creating, it doesn't have to be art or music or the building of new things. It can be giving new life to something old and broken. It can involve fixing something with my own hands that I may normally have asked a professional to do. Our family cars come to mind. I have become somewhat of a fix-it person and have become courageous at attempting repairs that I encounter.
I recently ran into a problem with a chainsaw, it just didn't run. I tried all the obvious stuff--bad gas, spark plug, air filter--to no avail. It seemed like the problem was one of not getting gas to the motor. I had never torn into a small engine such as this and by the time I realized I may have gone to far, I had a workbench entirely covered with little, big, rubber, plastic, and aluminum parts. I discovered a few deteriorated rubber hoses that had grown brittle with age, (after all the saw was 20 years old) and a very dirty carburetor. I cleaned the carb but I had to get some replacement gas line from the hardware to replace the bad stuff. Unfortunately it had grown to late to get to the store, so it would have to wait for the reassembly process to begin.
Then I forgot about this project for a couple weeks and moved on to other things (at least that's the story and I'm sticking to it).
I had put the gas line on a list of some other things that I needed to pick up from town, and I came across that while out and about one Saturday and picked it up from the local Ace Hardware Store. Which I might add, we are fortunate in Mason, to still have a hardware store, even two of them that darn near sit a block apart.
My first thought when I took the hose to the bench was "How am I going to remember the places all these parts go when I get ready to re-assemble it?" I felt a large bit of frustrated fear, though the chain saw was already broken, I had now furthered that cause along even more. I also thought I could have just bought a new saw for $150 bucks and not had to worry about tearing this one apart and putting it back together again.
Ah, but where is the satisfaction in that?
Well, I tore into the job, slowly, looking at each part that I picked up like it was a new species that I had just that moment discovered. I began to make sense of the job and was able to put it all back together right the third time (twice I had to stop and back-up to put in a part that I overlooked). To my amazement, the darn saw fired up with just a few pulls and ran as good as it ever did.
When I look at my need to fix broken things, create a bit of new life in old, worn objects, I believe it stems from the basic fact that we grow fond of the landscape of our lives. And that landscape includes those items that have serviced you for a time. Cars, tools, bikes and even clothing become part of that very fabric (no pun intended) of the world we live in.
And right now, I am not ready to trade in all the stuff that I work and play with. Things now may be improved to be lighter and stronger and shinier, but they don't have the captured soul of "Me" dwelling inside them. This may be why Super Glue, JB Weld and Duct Tape are so popular, it holds our soul together as well as our old fishing pole.
I try to remember this little story when I tackle odd projects in my life. I feel a great deal of satisfaction with the act of creating things. And by creating, it doesn't have to be art or music or the building of new things. It can be giving new life to something old and broken. It can involve fixing something with my own hands that I may normally have asked a professional to do. Our family cars come to mind. I have become somewhat of a fix-it person and have become courageous at attempting repairs that I encounter.
I recently ran into a problem with a chainsaw, it just didn't run. I tried all the obvious stuff--bad gas, spark plug, air filter--to no avail. It seemed like the problem was one of not getting gas to the motor. I had never torn into a small engine such as this and by the time I realized I may have gone to far, I had a workbench entirely covered with little, big, rubber, plastic, and aluminum parts. I discovered a few deteriorated rubber hoses that had grown brittle with age, (after all the saw was 20 years old) and a very dirty carburetor. I cleaned the carb but I had to get some replacement gas line from the hardware to replace the bad stuff. Unfortunately it had grown to late to get to the store, so it would have to wait for the reassembly process to begin.
Then I forgot about this project for a couple weeks and moved on to other things (at least that's the story and I'm sticking to it).
I had put the gas line on a list of some other things that I needed to pick up from town, and I came across that while out and about one Saturday and picked it up from the local Ace Hardware Store. Which I might add, we are fortunate in Mason, to still have a hardware store, even two of them that darn near sit a block apart.
My first thought when I took the hose to the bench was "How am I going to remember the places all these parts go when I get ready to re-assemble it?" I felt a large bit of frustrated fear, though the chain saw was already broken, I had now furthered that cause along even more. I also thought I could have just bought a new saw for $150 bucks and not had to worry about tearing this one apart and putting it back together again.
Ah, but where is the satisfaction in that?
Well, I tore into the job, slowly, looking at each part that I picked up like it was a new species that I had just that moment discovered. I began to make sense of the job and was able to put it all back together right the third time (twice I had to stop and back-up to put in a part that I overlooked). To my amazement, the darn saw fired up with just a few pulls and ran as good as it ever did.
When I look at my need to fix broken things, create a bit of new life in old, worn objects, I believe it stems from the basic fact that we grow fond of the landscape of our lives. And that landscape includes those items that have serviced you for a time. Cars, tools, bikes and even clothing become part of that very fabric (no pun intended) of the world we live in.
And right now, I am not ready to trade in all the stuff that I work and play with. Things now may be improved to be lighter and stronger and shinier, but they don't have the captured soul of "Me" dwelling inside them. This may be why Super Glue, JB Weld and Duct Tape are so popular, it holds our soul together as well as our old fishing pole.
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2 comments:
Grandpa Filkins would be proud of you,small engines were his passion,he loved to tinker and get them running. Glad you have that ability now,it comes in handy and saves alot of cash! Besides the old things are built better than the throw a ways you get now,and it leaves you with a good feeling about yourself.
Mom
Tinkering was kind of a way of life. Often times we had so little that we had to come up with some creative ways to fix things ourselves. Our bicycles were often salvaged parts from junk days around our town and we had a sort-of mini bike junkyard to harvest spare parts from. People threw some good stuff away back in the day.
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