Saturday, November 20, 2004

My son, my dad, and working on cars

Today Jakeb and I replaced the brake calipers, balanced and rotated the tires, and changed the oil in my Explorer. It reminded me of being a kid again. My dad is a mechanic and I grew up around a gas station.

Smells trigger memories and when I smell brake cleaner, brake fluid, old oil, or tire rubber I think of growing up around my dad. Mom has a picture of me when I was six or seven with dad teaching me how to weld. I changed my first water pump in a car when I was in seventh grade. Before I could drive in high school I was changing clutches in manual transmissions and rebuilding engines.

My dad taught me more than how to work on a car while I was learning to work on cars. He taught me what it means to have a strong work ethic, how to treat people with respect and about honesty in business. I learned how mean people can be when they think you are their servant and I learn how to stand your ground while treating others fairly.

I hope Jakeb learns how to work on cars, but I hope he doesn’t leave the more important things undone either.

2 comments:

praynlady said...

You know that I think those things are great and that they are some of the things I shall miss the most with Ian. However, I truly miss that he will not be with us at the deer lease. Maybe you should try it sometime and let Jake teach you a thing or two about deer hunting. haha I haven't read anything on your blog about his awesome weekend. I for one was extremely proud of him and was sorry that I was not able to be there when he became a "real hunter" haha.

praynlady said...

Tommy, I hope you don't mistake what wrote as a slam on you. I just wanted to "clarify". I only meant that for him it might have been nice if you were there too, not, that you weren't excited for him. I hope that it didn't sound that way, but upon re-reading it, I decided it would be best just to let you know I wasn't the clod is made me sound like. (I'm just jealous of Pawpaw for being there and not me) Could be I'm bitter... haha