To My Dad

I was working in my woodshop the other night, building a window box for the east side window. Susan wants to plant flowers in it just to make it look more friendly in the back yard. I was thinking about what I needed to do for my dads up coming 80th birthday.

Just getting the information out to all the family and knowing that they are all coming was the biggest part. Because as you all know my motto is " it will always work out ". Cakes are being ordered, reservations for the coppermill are done, and we have all the sleeping arrangements made. So I guess I can just think of my dad and what he has done for me in my life.

My first story is about my first car. The 1966 belvedere plymouth four door in INEL gray. I think dad paid 1 dollar for every 833 miles that was on the odometer. For you who don't want to use your calculator to figure that out it is close to 250,000 miles. if that is not the correct mileage, it was close.

I am not sure I got it when I was a sophmore or the summer between sopmore and junior year in highschool. In those days you could drive when you were 14 years old. I remember dad bringing it home and parking it under the tree in the back yard so he could give me a mechanics lesson on car maintence. We changed the oil, and did a tuneup on the car, new sparkplugs, distributor cap & rotor, changed the antifreeze and checked the tires. A couple of days later when we had all the work done on the car I was now mobile, I could travel to the ends of the world. Or at least to the highschool three times a day gas was 25 cents a gallon.

It was not long after the work was done on the car that we realized we had another problem the exhaust manifold was cracked. So we pulled it back under the tree and went to work on it again. We pulled the manifold off and it came off in two pieces ( it is not supposed to be two pieces ) Instead buying a new one dad decided to try and have it welded, manifolds were made out of cast iron in those days and very difficult to weld. He did some research and figured out that when the item was welded it heated up real fast and the secret was to not let it cool quickly or it could warp. So when the welding was done the manifold was buried in a box of sand so it cooled slowly. It worked, and I was now mobile again. Look out world

One of the many things I learned from my dad and I think I still use to this day. Is how to figure out how to make things work. Dad thanks for the 4 days of mechanic lessons. But mostly thanks for the lifetime of being able to figure things out when I need to.

Love Curtis