I did something new last week. Solomon may have thought there was nothing new under the sun, but this was new to me.

You’ll be underwhelmed when you learn what the accomplishment was. It’s not something most folks would trumpet to just anyone whose attention they could snag. Still, for a man well into his sixth decade, the completion of the task for the first time seems to me to be somewhat significant.

The house in which the Lovely Lady and I live has stood for one more decade than have I. For all those years, the front entrance has been a wooden hollow-core door. It has not fared well over a lifetime, providing only a nominal level of security. I would guess that any person so inclined, and equipped with a decent pair of boots, could have kicked it down at any time in the last few years.

So, when a neighbor offered to donate a perfectly good steel entry door she had replaced recently, I thought it might be time to replace the sad old thing on the front of our home. I won’t bore you with the tedious details but, after several hours of labor—and, I’m delighted to report, with no blood being shed—the new/old door functions reasonably well as a barrier to unwanted salesmen and wandering children. Yes, I know it still needs to have the ratty threshold replaced, but that’s a job for another day.

A new thing.

I’ve never hung a door in my life. I’d been led to believe it was an extremely difficult task, one at which seasoned carpenters had been known to blanch and walk off many a job site without a backward glance.

That last may have been a slight exaggeration on my part, but the hyperbole makes it seem more like a worthy accomplishment, does it not?

I don’t mean to sound like I need a pat on the back.

I don’t. Not today.

It’s just that when I was out in the storage shed looking for a replacement part for the deadbolt that needed to be installed on the new door, I noticed something on the workbench that awoke an old realization.

Seeing that red spring sitting there (nearly forty years after I’ve needed one) caused a week full of memories to explode across my tired old brain.

The year was 1984. The Lovely Lady and I, along with a two-year-old toddler (who was going on thirteen) and a nearly one-year-old baby, were traveling back home (for me) to South Texas in a 1965 Chevrolet Biscayne sedan. Sixty miles from our destination, the car’s motor began to act up. For me, the week of vacation was to become a week of tribulation and frustration. And triumph.

I was about to do new things—things I had never done before. I was also about to realize that my image of my father was a little skewed. Or not.

Two days after we arrived at my childhood home, I was elbows deep in two hundred thirty cubic inches of the six-cylinder motor in the crippled Chevy when my dad came out to check on me. The carburetor was on one fender, the valve cover on another, and the oil-covered valve lifters and springs sat exposed on top of the motor in front of me.

“I can’t believe you’ve torn up your car like that!” My dad was incredulous.

I was confused. I was certain my father was a do-it-yourselfer from way back, tackling jobs himself instead of paying to have them done. As a young adult, I believed I had followed his example when trying to do repair and improvement jobs myself rather than spending my hard-earned cash for the expertise of others.

I was baffled. And, I said so to him.

“I don’t know what you remember about me, but I’d never tackle a job like that,” he replied.

I put the valve cover back on and replaced the carburetor. Closing the hood, I called a local mechanic and made an appointment for the next day.

My world was shaken. My dad wasn’t who I thought he was. I needed to consider this. But, over the next two days, as we waited on the mechanic, whose expertise I was relying on, I thought about my memories of my youth at home.

I remembered, years before, the man tearing down an old house to make his just purchased property a safe place for his kids to play. My mind had images of his ancient Ford station wagon straddling an irrigation ditch while he lay under it draining the oil and replacing the filter. And I had only to walk into the living room at the old house to see the louvered room divider between the living and dining room he and Mom had built from pieces of raw lumber and dowels purchased at the local lumberyard.

I breathed a little easier. And I regretted the hundred fifty dollar invoice I paid to the mechanic in a day or two. He had replaced a broken valve spring. That’s all.

A little red spring that sat under the valve lifters. The valve lifters I had been looking at when I abandoned my efforts. I was inches from success when I had surrendered. Inches.

I spent a few more hours during that vacation week reading about the process of replacing valve springs. You know.  Just in case.

At the end of that week, we waved and hugged goodbye as we loaded our luggage and kids in the big old boat of a car and headed back north.

Three hours later, we sat at the side of the road with another broken valve spring.

We limped to a garage beside the highway a few miles on, but they couldn’t offer any help except to sell me a couple of used valve springs. That was after they told me it would be three days before the repair could be effected.

But I’m a do-it-yourselfer, the son of a do-it-yourselfer!

Borrowing a bit of rope to keep the pushrod from dropping into the motor’s cylinder, I did the repair myself as the mechanics sat nearby and drank their beer, speculating on how long it would take me to surrender.

I didn’t surrender. They were amazed.

A new thing. That day, I did a new thing.

I have kept the extra valve spring all these years, never believing I’d need it again. I can’t bring myself to dispose of it. Symbols of victories won are precious, however small their monetary value might be.

I’m not advocating that everyone needs to become a DIYer. That’s not wise.

What I do believe is that we should never stop learning. Never.

And never stop doing new things.

What I also believe is that we should pass on our wisdom, the memories of our triumphs—along with our failures, to the generations that come after us. Dads, moms, grandparents, neighbors—we share who we are and what we hope to become with young ones desperately looking for examples. Good examples.

At twenty-seven years old, remembering my roots, I repaired a motor by the side of the road for the first time. Last week, nearly forty years later, I hung a door for the first time.

I wonder what I’ll be doing in twenty years. I hope I’ll still be learning. And doing.

I’d like to think there still are a few young ones who might learn something worth passing on to others yet to be born.

I hope they’ll learn more than just about front doors and old Chevys.

It’s the way our Creator designed things.

Parents, teach your children.

 

Tell your children about it,
Let your children tell their children,
And their children another generation.
(Joel 1:3, NKJV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2021. All Rights Reserved.