Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 11:26:23 -0800
Reply-To: dylan friedman <insyncro@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: dylan friedman <insyncro@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: grease monkeys
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Ron,
You are not alone.
I too am a greasey monkey;)
I work on Porsches, Vanagons, race cars........................., shoot I even put my John Deere 4wd tractor up on the hoist and wrench on it.
It is one of the most fulfilling ways to express creativity and ingenuity that I have found thus far.
Long live the grease monkey!
dylan
----- Original Message ----
From: Ronald Michaels <rbm1024@NETSCAPE.NET>
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 1:53:06 PM
Subject: grease monkeys
Recently Joy Hecht made a reference to "grease monkeys" as guys who just
love to work on autos. This inspired me to write the following.
Hello, My name is Ron and I am a Grease Monkey. My father was a Grease
Monkey, as was his father before him (sawmills, steam engines, and
suchlike). As a small child I watched my father work on cars for stock car
drivers. He built roll cages into Ford bodies, built up wide reverse rim
wheels, welded up blocks and cracked heads with nickel rods, overhaul
flathead Ford V8 engines, make all sort of odd parts, and so forth. Old
photographs from the late 1930s show him and my mother beside his 32 Ford Coup.
We went to the races on the half mile dirt tracks in East Tennessee. The
sounds were deafening and the thunder of the exhausts made my small child's
chest hurt. I now live about 2 miles from a track and on Saturday nights in
the summer I can hear the exhaust sounds from the races.
After WWII in the South, working on cars was a rite of passage for young
men. While most of my contemporaries were working on Ford Hot Rods, I was
working away learning VW's. While I was in the Navy, I bought my first
Porsche, a 57 Coupe. In order to get it running I had to rebuild the engine
and replace second gear in the transmission. I later wrapped that car around
a telephone pole (and broke the pole off). Several months later I bought a
57 Speedster with factory installed reclining seats (member poll content -
modesty prevents me from saying more). Since I could just about afford
parts, I did everything myself. My wife and I drove that car to Key West
(and back) on our honeymoon.
We joined the Peace Corps after I graduated with a BS in Engineering
Physics. We were slated to become teachers but I was offered the job of
Mechanical Superintendent at the Mole Game Reserve in Northern Ghana. It was
all about Land Rovers and Bedford Trucks. It might be politically incorrect
to refer to the Africans that I worked with as Grease Monkeys, but they were
excellent mechanics.
I then started working in the construction industry in the US and then in
Africa and the Middle East. I remember many happy afternoons rushing home to
continue to hone my skills as a Grease Monkey by performing necessary
maintenance on whatever third world vehicle we owned at the time. While in
Zimbabwe I had so much trouble with air cooled VW engines in the high
altitude tropics that I made a solemn vow, and that was that I would never
buy another air cooled vehicle (except lawn mowers) as long as I lived.
I came home and went to Graduate School and continued to live in East
Tennessee, where I bought K cars, replaced the odd starter, CV joint,
overhauled my 78 bus engine (bought long before the above vow), etc.
So last year when my wife wanted a vehicle to travel in, she bought a water
cooled Westy, that same Westy that is now sitting in Redding CA waiting for
a Boston Bob engine to be installed at California rates. Go Bob!
My name is Ron and I am a Grease Monkey. I cannot help myself; it is my
destiny to own a Vanagon.
Ron
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