As a child, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It read in part:<\/p>\n
I work behind the counter of an automotive store;
\nSometimes I’m called a genius; sometimes I’m called much more.<\/p>\n
It ended with:
\n… And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d grin from ear to ear
\nIf the customer would only tell me the model, make and year.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n
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.
\nAccordingly, 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.<\/p>\n
My 11-year-old brain failed to see the gist of Jess\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a carb for just a Ford; one needed to explain which kind (model and year) of Ford.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ironic that once, when I needed a flasher to fix our car\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s turn signals, Jimmy, at White\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Auto, said there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only one kind. One size fits all. That was then.<\/p>\n
Well, mere models of cars have become plenitudinous, and that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even count the number of foreign cars tooling around Las Vegas. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really a pity that Chevy parts don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit Fords. Never did.<\/p>\n
That thought was on my mind last week as I went for an oil change at Pino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Not that I can recall,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d literally.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n
You see, the courthouse looked something like my house, where the eternal quandary revolves around this issue: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not working; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll cost a fortune to fix; I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give it away if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s broken; we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just put it in the trash; and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too good to throw away.<\/p>\n
We all heard of planned obsolescence as far back as the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc20s. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the policy of designing things, such as cars, to last a short time, in order to sell more of them. Along with that came \u00e2\u20ac\u201d whether by coincidence or design \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the manufacturing of things not really reparable.<\/p>\n
When one of our floor lamps stopped working, my dad would cart it to a shop on Sixth Street, operated by Charles O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Malley. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d fix it. But how many Charles O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Malleys remain?<\/p>\n
How many mechanics can perform work on a modern car without the use of a computer that tells them what needs to be fixed?<\/p>\n
Part of this can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t-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.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten about it \u00e2\u20ac\u201d until I received a phone call explaining they couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fix it. That was 30 months later. So I bought another.<\/p>\n
And it was not an occasion for grinning from ear to ear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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