I had a propensity for mischief growing up. I was a risk taker, an adventurer and a questioner of authority. I guess that’s what happens when your parents were hippies, you traveled the southwest and Mexico in a Volkswagen, and sometimes it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission….or just take the consequences. I raked a lot of dog crap.
But…the summer before my freshman year, my family decided the best way to keep me from making too much mischief was to put me to work at Bisbee Bug, my uncle’s auto repair business. Everyday I showed up with my hair tucked under a Chicago bears hat, and I washed parts. Every morning, a new pile of parts was ready and waiting for me in the solvent bin, never the same part twice. Oh the monotony….
I lost the urge to complain early on. Jack wasn’t one to mince his words, and after hearing ” You can be happy or unhappy while you work, but you are still going to work, up to you” a dozen times a day, I realized he was right. Lesson # 1: Whistle while you work; The time went faster when I talked and joked with Joe his mechanic and the customers, ALL of which knew me. Before I knew it summer was over. By the time school started, I was really looking forward to being out of the garage… and having clean hands and long nails again.
The reprieve didn’t last long. After school started I was expected to get off the bus, and head to the shop. And I did grumble just a bit… I was no longer washing parts, now I was sorting parts. Jack had this diagram in a spiral bound book, and he would point to a part and tell me to find it among the parts I had washed. Needles….haystacks….I think he started with the smallest part. The customers and friends who stopped by periodically to ‘shoot the shit’ as my Aunt Pat called it would chuckle and ask if I had been promoted.
After weeks of sorting, Jack flipped to the front of the spiral bound book, “How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Complete Idiot” by John Muir, and told me to start at the beginning. Come again? Yes, he said, “Start at page one, your not an idiot”, and walked away.
Learning curve: steep. Frustration level: through the roof. After a few hours of checking the book, checking the parts, going back to the book, checking the diagram, reading the directions, checking the parts again, I was near tears, and it was time to close up shop. Jack came to check on me and saw that I made no progress, and was holding back my emotions. He shrugged and said, “Tomorrow is a new day”, turned off the lights and locked up.
The next day, I dragged my feet down the canyon to the shop, knowing the frustration that would surely await. I got there, and Jack was waiting for me, with that dreaded book. After explaining the first few steps, and what he expected me to accomplish during that day, he said to me, “Don’t wait until you are in over your head to ask for help, I’m right here, you aren’t bothering me, don’t act like an idiot”. Lesson #2: Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it, which in another translation was, it is ok not to know.
Over the course of my Freshman year, I worked my way through the book, Engine, Transmission, Drive shaft…And I asked for help SOOOOOO many times along the way. Lesson #3: I am vaulued and valuable. Jack was never impatient. He was never short, and he paused countless conversations and tasks to help me. As the school year came to a close, I had assembled the major components of a Volkswagen. One day Jack called me over to a bug on blocks, nothing unusual in a bug shop right? It was bright orange, and had Baja style fenders and not much else. The engine had been blown, transmission shot, windshield shattered. And he and my mom had bought it for me to put the engine and transmission I had build in. By the time I started my Sophomore year, I had a fully operational, street legal Baja bug. Lesson #4: Hard work pays off and good things come to those who wait.
It didn’t take long for me to learn Lessons #5 and #6. With in a month of driving, I rolled my little Baja right off a bridge. Lesson #5: Don’t speed (Still working on this one, but luckily in Michigan speed limits are more like guidelines) and Lesson #6: I am not invincible.
Lesson #7 came in the aftermath of the accident. Jack came to see me when I was still laid up. He said that another bug was found with a blown engine, and when I was ready, it would be waiting. The second bug didn’t take as long as the first, and it lasted a lot longer too. One afternoon, as we worked on disassembling the blown engine, Jack told me a story:
Old Macgregor was sitting in the bar and he says to the bartender, ‘When the bridge to town fell down, I built a new bridge, do they call me Macgregor the bridge builder? NO! When the well went dry, I dug a new well. Do they call me Macgregor the well builder? NO! When the roads were washed away by the flood and I built a new road, did they call me Macgregor the road builder? NO! F*&% one goat….’.
Now Jack was a joke teller from time to time, but I didn’t get the joke. Not uncommon for me. He shook his head, and said “Remember the story, there is truth to be had. It is a pearl of wisdom.”
25 years later, I found Jack’s pearl. I was sitting with my superintendent who had done so many wonderful things during her tenure. She had worked hard for the staff, students and families of the district, yet she was being relentlessly harassed by a community member for some perceived slight. And I realized then that despite the bridges, wells and roads she had built, it wouldn’t ever be enough to change the perception of the naysayers. No matter how much good a person does, one perceived slight can tarnish a person forever. I shared the story of Macgregor with her, and we both had a good laugh, and now an inside joke. But I learned Lesson #7: Your reputation is only as good as your worst deed, even if it is a deed you didn’t actually do.
Jack was one of the most important people in my life, and aside from the Volkwagen, Jack took me camping, fishing, and sledding. He gave me my first dog, Kiabab, and helped me build her a dog house. He taught me to drive a dune buggy on the beach in Mexico. He was there for my first drunk on a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold, passed around the campfire, and a lesson on the misery of drunkenness (Lesson #8?). I was there with he and Pat the morning Nicholas was born, and Pat was with me when ALL my kids were born. In many ways, Jack set the bar for what I looked for in a spouse, since for many years, he was the primary male role model I had.
My hope at this time is that I can make it back to Bisbee to make sure that Jack knows how much I appreciate and value the lessons he taught me. I hope to be able to pass those same lessons on to my kids, but most of all I am so grateful for his presence in my life, and the valuable lessons he taught me.
