As a child, I’d spend a lot of time waiting for my dad to get off work at B.M. Werley Auto Co., then the Ford Dealership on Grand Avenue.

I knew all the front-office staff and most of those in the garage. Remember, in those days, new cars were guaranteed to break at least once on being driven for the first time. That kept the backshop full and the crew busy.

In the front were my dad, J.D., the owner, B.M. Werley and his son Jack, Ross Bancroft and Jess Gallegos. Once, in the parts department, in front, I noticed a typed poem that Jess or Ross had taped near the cash register.

It read in part:

I work behind the counter of an automotive store;
Sometimes I’m called a genius; sometimes I’m called much more.

It ended with:
… And I’d grin from ear to ear
If the customer would only tell me the model, make and year.

That was back around 1948. Jess, one of the parts managers, had to keep track of many parts, and for only three kinds of cars: Lincoln, Mercury and Ford. Of course, there were probably variations within each brand of car: a Fairlane and a Crestline, a Continental or a Town Car.

Life was simpler then. And parts managers complained that customers often would rush in and ask simply for a fuel pump or an oil filter. I didn’t believe then that there would be more than one kind of pump or filter. But there must have been. And that was more than 60 years ago.

It would be easy to assert there are many times more parts nowadays, given the number of makes, not to mention models. As a youngster, I remember my dad telling me that essentially, there were three levels of cars manufactured by the Big Three auto makers.
Accordingly, the higher-priced cars, from General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, respectively, were the Cadillac, Chrysler and the Lincoln. The medium-priced cars in each group were Buick and Olds, Dodge and DeSoto, and Mercury. The cars most others drove were Chevy, Plymouth and Ford.

My 11-year-old brain failed to see the gist of Jess’s complaint. I reasoned that a carburetor, for example, for a Ford would also fit a Mercury and a Lincoln. Jess showed me how wrong I was, as he led me to the recesses of the dealership and showed me that there wasn’t a carb for just a Ford; one needed to explain which kind (model and year) of Ford.

It’s ironic that once, when I needed a flasher to fix our car’s turn signals, Jimmy, at White’s Auto, said there’s only one kind. One size fits all. That was then.

Well, mere models of cars have become plenitudinous, and that doesn’t even count the number of foreign cars tooling around Las Vegas. It’s really a pity that Chevy parts don’t fit Fords. Never did.

That thought was on my mind last week as I went for an oil change at Pino’s on Grand. I asked the owner, Lawrence Pino, whether his staff has ever simply failed to have in stock a filter for a particular car. “Not that I can recall,” he said. He explained that some filters seem to fit perfectly but might be the wrong kind, which could lead to big repairs down the road — literally.

He said the Pennzoil station he operates has a basement the same dimensions as the ground floor. And there must be thousands of oil filters down there.

But back to parts in general. When was the last time you were able to get the exact part for a corn popper or a power mower? Likely, when repair is beyond our capabilities, we cart the thing to the shop, or replace it.

Your computer on the fritz? Good luck. About 11 years ago, when I served as a recruiter for the 2000 Census, I drove weekly to a number of sites in the seven northeastern counties to test prospective enumerators.

The Guadalupe County Courthouse in Santa Rosa is an example of the inability to get things fixed. As I entered the ancient courthouse, I noticed a bank of computers, monitors, printers, toner cartridges stacked several feet high and feet deep and across. But this isn’t to disparage my friends from Guacamole County; virtually every government building had a large storage room for broken or obsolete computer equipment. That was 11 years ago, around the time the country was getting over its infatuation with dot matrix and turning to ink jets and lasers.

You see, the courthouse looked something like my house, where the eternal quandary revolves around this issue: It’s not working; it’ll cost a fortune to fix; I can’t give it away if it’s broken; we can’t just put it in the trash; and it’s too good to throw away.

We all heard of planned obsolescence as far back as the ‘20s. That’s the policy of designing things, such as cars, to last a short time, in order to sell more of them. Along with that came — whether by coincidence or design — the manufacturing of things not really reparable.

When one of our floor lamps stopped working, my dad would cart it to a shop on Sixth Street, operated by Charles O’Malley. He’d fix it. But how many Charles O’Malleys remain?

How many mechanics can perform work on a modern car without the use of a computer that tells them what needs to be fixed?

Part of this can’t-be-repaired discussion actually is autobiographical. Foolishly, I once left an inoperable, but then-rather expensive Sony Walkman tape player for repairs at a shop in Santa Fe.

I’d forgotten about it — until I received a phone call explaining they couldn’t fix it. That was 30 months later. So I bought another.

And it was not an occasion for grinning from ear to ear.