Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Want of Grow up to be a Grease-Monkey?

You want to wind up a Grease-Monkey?

My garage is a tomb of past projects and ambitions. I have so many interests and relics that walking through the shop reveals a panorama of things I have worked on over the years. Examples are welders, lift equipment, pneumatic can crushers, flat head engines, sheet-metal working gadgets, rifle reloading stuff, body working paraphernalia and RC model airplanes. In the house are figurines, fitness equipment and art producing stuff, like paper, paints and brushes. I am a veritable passion going somewhere to happen. Of all of my compulsions, writing is perhaps what I am best at. That is a key point to understand. I am not really all that good at anything but have tried my hand at a host too numerous to mention.

Once while still in the service I was in Norfolk and visited the Mariner’s Museum and saw the Henry Huddleston Rogers collection of model ships. I immediately bought a set of plans and went to work trying to replicate one of these beautiful models. For those who don’t know, the British during the Cromwell period were led by Generals who knew nothing about Sea-power. Imagine that--- Great Britain, one of the greatest maritime nations in history led by a bunch of land lubbers. These Army guys were not formally trained in nautical nuance and so had to be shown details of the profession using ship models of incredibly fine detail and craftsmanship. A practice was made of taking all captured vessels and “taking the lines off.” This involved careful measurements taken at various stations along the hull and drawing them on a piece of paper in three views, front top and side. Today this same idea is applied in drafting where any object is represented in these three views from which a three dimensional model of anything can be built. In trade school today this is still being taught but using computer CADs equipment to supplement the old drawing board.

On the flying field Chad was telling me that he is building a large scale flying model from three pictures, you got it (front, top and side) from which he has produced plans in tech school for the building of this unique airplane model. Isn’t it amazing how things change but still stay the same? I remember taking Mechanical Drawing in Middle School. It was that or learning a musical instrument, silk screening or print shop.

I always loved working with my hands but my parents had other plans for their enigmatic youngest son. My father wanted a soldier and that was that. He once got short in one of his many moments of angst, “What do want to grow up into, a grease monkey?” Actually I would have loved to own and run a gas station… the maintenance bays were always intriguing as were the lifts, welders, tire changers and all that. However, good ole Dad had other ideas and it turned out I did have a bit of aptitude for military service. One of my father’s favorite sayings was “Forget about what you want, if you don’t step up and lead, you're doomed to be led by idiots!” There is some truth in what he said, although it took me a good many years to realize it.