General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Where are the craftsmen of tomorrow? [View all]patrice
(47,992 posts)maintenance and repair for pleasure and even socialization.
My first husband, who worked for IBM, spent his Saturdays in his garage, with whatever our vehicle was at the time, and with his beer refrigerator and his radio. He did all of the basic maintenance on his vehicles and basic repairs. Friends would come over, or he would go over to their garages. They'd do things like buy an old truck and take the engine out and drop a monster big-block in there (which I then had to re-learn how to manage the new clutch and steer with the tiny little steering wheel that they though was so cool). They all had regular jobs, but when they got into motorcycles, they learned to work on those too and taught one another what they knew. I had a couple of winters in which stripped down engine parts were laid out across my kitchen floor while something was "bored and stroked" in some other guy's garage across town.
A good side effect of this was that, aside from parts, we never paid a dime for auto repairs and apparently some of the skills were generalizable, so my husband could also fix other stuff around the house.