I am not a “Handyman,” nor am I a handy man. I own that. It came to me late and after I spent lots of time and money proving that I am not handy. This is the story of my struggle to come to terms with not being handy.
I grew up in a household where my dad was not handy. He thought he was, but he wasn’t. We had in our tool drawer (junk drawer to most people) a pair of pliers, a Philips head screwdriver, and a tack hammer. We had a saw hanging up in the broom closet, but I never saw it used. For a flathead screwdriver, my dad usually went to the flatware drawer and got out a sturdy butter knife. I certainly didn’t learn any “fixit” skills at home.
You might think that all of the work I did on my grandfather’s farm would have included some training in farm maintenance skills, but I really didn’t. My grandfather was content to use my strong back to lift bales of hay, crates of sweet potatoes, and to scrape the earth with a hoe. Later in life I worked on pipeline construction jobs where the only skill required was to work hard, be strong, and don’t mind getting muddy. I excelled at those tasks. Then I got a job on a river boat as a deck hand. I learned how to splice line, but I already knew how to do that and how to tie a bowline knot from my Boy Scout days. The rest of my duties included chipping paint and repainting decks, cleaning bathrooms and gallies, and being strong.
I excelled at being strong and working hard, but really had no handyman skills. Turns out I didn’t need any up through my college days. During my last year in college, I met a wonderful girl who I asked to marry me after only dating for 6 weeks. We were married just under 7 months after our first date. Her mother loved me. I think her father liked me, but mostly tolerated my lack of skills. He loved to fish; I hated fishing. He could, and did, fix anything and he had every tool imaginable. I had no fixit skills. I like to think he finally got over his disappointment after a while. Certainly, he stopped asking me to go fish with him. His hope that I might one day be handy never really died, Every Christmas, I got some sort of a power tool from him. I still use the Montgomery Ward electric drill he got me 50 years ago. Luckily, he never got me a power saw. I am pretty sure my mother-in-law had something to do with that.
When I graduated from college and entered the Army, the structure allowed for separation of responsibilities. As an officer, I was responsible for setting policy and procedures. It was the job of the enlisted soldiers to perform all the maintenance on equipment in the Army. Some officers never grasped that and kept trying to monkey in the world of enlisted business. Early in my first assignment in a missile unit one of the senior sergeants came to me and presented me with the only tool he said an officer should use on the missile site. It was a giant flathead screwdriver with the head cut off. About all I could adjust with that might be the poor attitude of some soldier who needed a head slap with a tool.
Still, I persisted in believing I could master some simple handy man skills. I seemed to be surrounded by neighbors and friends who could change their own oil, rotate tires, set the timing on their cars and so on. Once a friend convinced me that I could change the shocks on my car, which, by the way, was pretty new and very likely didn’t need new shocks. He explained that I could take it to the auto craft shop on post and they had all the tools I needed to do the task. I bought new shocks and reported to the craft shop one Saturday morning. He had told me that I should be able to finish it in a couple of hours. At noon I took a lunch break and then went back to the task right after that. I had already spent 4 hours working on the shocks. I finished about 3 hours later. I turned in my tools and the clerk asked me about the vice grip pliers. I just assumed I had already turned those in, and he acknowledged that could be right. I drove home exhausted, but feeling pretty proud of myself. The next day, my wife drove the car and noticed a terrible noise under the front end whenever she made a turn. She drove it by the dealership and asked them about it. They put it on a lift and then returned to her with a pair of vice grip pliers that were stuck in the springs of the car. I haven’t tried that again.
Another example of my lack of handiness came when we were first stationed in Germany. The little apartment we lived in had an oil water heater. These were temporary quarters, and we were scheduled to move into on post housing soon. In fact, we had been assigned some quarters on post, but we had a planned trip to take over a long weekend so we waited. Our landlady told us to turn the water heater off before we left to save on oil. I did that. When we got back, from our trip we both wanted a hot bath, so I set about lighting the oil water heater. There was a tube leading down to the burner for the oil where you would stick a burning piece of paper to ignite the heater. I had turned the oil back on and proceeded to light it. What I didn’t know was that while we were gone, there was a dripping of oil into the burner area so that after a few days there was a small pool of oil there. I stuck the lighted paper into the hole and waited for it to start heating water. What it did instead was to begin rumbling and shaking and then a steam of fire shot out of the hole and bounced off the tile wall behind me. The heater settled down and then started up again with the rumbling and shaking, and shooting flame out of the tiny flame thrower. It was January and there was snow on the ground outside, but I had visions of the water heater blowing up and consuming our building in flame. I told my wife to evacuate the building while I ran up the street to a friend’s apartment to use their phone and call for help. I ran, barefoot, in the snow to call. I reached the landlady, and she had her son run over and settle things out. Everyone moved back into the building and my wife told me she was not about to sleep in there that night. Fortunately, we had the key to our new quarters on post, so we just gathered up what we needed for the night and headed over to our new apartment.
Being in the Army and moving as often as we did, I was able to learn how to hang drapes, and do some simple plumbing stuff. I was also pretty good at changing light bulbs. Fortunately, living in quarters meant that the post engineers would handle any of the big maintenance chores for us.
Time passes and we were living in a home we bought in Virginia while I was stationed in the Pentagon. There were small handy necessary chores I tried in that home and didn’t hurt myself or cause any real damage to the house. One day, I decided it was time to change the oil in our Oldsmobile. There was a special going on at Montgomery Ward in Fredericksburg, VA, for $19.00 to get the oil changed. I figured I should be able to do that, so I ventured out to the hardware store and bought a filter and a filter wrench to take to old oil filter off. I also picked up several quarts of oil to replace the oil I would drain. Then there was the basin I had to buy to drain the oil into. Still not $19.00. Saturday morning rolled around, and I went out to the car in the driveway and crawled under it. I hadn’t invested in any ramps to elevate the car while I was under it, so I was cramped under the car. I managed to get the drain plug out of the oil pan to drain the oil into my new oil catching basin. I also managed to get oil in my left eye. Finally, the oil was drained, and it was time to remove the old oil filter. I put the filter wrench around the old filter and tightened it. I grunted and strained, but the old filter would not budge. Eventually, I strained so hard on it that I managed to collapse the filter so that the filter wrench no longer fit it. I crawled out from under the car and walked over to my neighbor who was a handy man and asked for his help. After about an hour of both of us taking turns with a hammer and a screwdriver trying to get the remnants of the old filter off, we gave up. The job that I could have had done at Montgomery Ward, while I waited in a bar, for $19.00 ended up costing me over $40.00 for the oil, filter, wrench, basin, and towing to a nearby service station. Lesson learned, again.
The last example I will share of my lack of handiness is another water heater story. We were still in the house in Virginia and one night we had no hot water. We needed hot water to wash dishes, clothes and us. I, quite astutely, recognized that I had no idea what was wrong with our electric water heater, so we called a local handyman, Mr. Greene. Mr. Greene didn’t live far away and came right over. I watched him while he ran some checks and then he announced that one of our two electrodes that heated the water was bad. He happened to have one he could use at his house. He borrowed our garden hose, and hooked it up the water heater to drain it. That took about an hour to complete. He came back, completed the job and went home. A couple months later we had no hot water again. In my “non-handy” mind, the issue was obvious. Clearly the second electrode must have gone out. I had watched Mr. Greene do the job. It seemed simple enough, how hard could it be. So, on a Saturday afternoon, I went to the hardware store and bought a new electrode, and a special electrode wrench. Sunday morning, I got up, turned off the breaker for the water heater, hooked up the hose to the heater and proceeded to drain it. While it was draining, we took our family to Sunday school and church. About halfway through church it occurred to me that I never turned off the water going into the tank, so it was just running through the tank and down my driveway. In the middle of the pastor’s sermon, it hit me, and I jumped up, told my wife I would be back and ran out of church. It took me about 15 minutes to get home and turn off the water. I went back to the church to pick up my wife and daughters and we came home to a now empty water heater.
Now came the moment of truth. Time to remove the old electrode. I applied my new wrench to the electrode and gave it about a quarter turn. I head a distinct hiss. Couldn’t figure out what that was so I made another quarter turn. The hiss got louder. After about a good turn and a half with the hiss getting louder, the electrode erupted from the tank, flew past my right ear and imbedded itself into the drywall behind me. It also blew fiberglass insulation all in my face and eyes. I ran to the bathroom and rinsed my face and eyes with cold water, because we had no hot water. When I finished. I heard my wife on the phone with Mr. Greene. He came over and asked me if I had opened the pressure valve on top of the water heater. Of course, I had not. I missed that part of watching him repair the other electrode. And, oh by the way. It turned out that the electrode was fine, but the thermostat had gone bad.
I can still do some simple things, but I now own the fact that I am not a handy man and thank the lord that I am blessed enough to pay someone to do these tasks for me. This is me helping the local economy.
granddaddystories 