For Stan, Russell, Michael, Bobby, Zach, and Kevin.

I think working with my hands is wrought into my DNA. I get a great deal of satisfaction and joy out of laying my hands to a machine or device, then taking it apart and putting it back together. Whether it’s rebuilding a car’s engine, or taking a soldering iron to my motherboard. It gives me a thrill - finding out what makes it tick. I suppose I could sit at my desk and fiddle the day away on my computer, but that’s not what I’m about. Some of us are just made that way.

A lot about what you do, you pick up along the way through trial and error, making your mistakes - sometimes more than once. But some of the best of what I learned, I learned from Uncle George.

I could spend hours at his side just helping, and watching, and learning. Years ago, after he passed away, Bobby gave me an old forged clamp-on table vice that had been part of his tool kit. It’s one of my most treasured possessions, and I use it often.

I remember a time decades ago when I was wet behind the ears and just learning how to repair my own machinery. I was out in my factory laying down on my back under a machine, banging on a two piece split bearing with a sledgehammer, and cursing like the devil at it because the son of a bitch was stuck and wouldn’t come off even though I’d removed the screws that held the two pieces together. My knuckles were bruised and bloodied, because I’ve been at it for about a half an hour. It was dead stuck on that shaft. Hell, it had been on there for at least forty years.

He saw what I was doing and said “Come out from under there.”
His face crinkled up into that smile that always came so readily, and he shifted the toothpick back to the side of his mouth, picked up the wrench I’d used to take the clamping bolts out, and screwed them into the other two unused holes that I’d ignored. I watched fascinated as he slowly screwed them in, and they gently pried the two pieces apart. I felt like an idiot. Two holes to tighten it up, and the other two to press it apart. Then he just as gently slid the bearing off the shaft, handed it to me, smiled again and said “Come on Dinner Lou, let’s go get a cup of coffee.”

Another time he walked into our little two room office/showroom when we were on York Street, and found me trying to pound a big ol' steel collar onto a shaft that I had taken it off of just a couple of hours earlier. It defied all logic. I’d been able to take it off, but the son of a bitch just wouldn’t even start to go back on. He watched for a few seconds, took the collar from me, and walked over to my table lamp, took off the shade and placed the collar on the light bulb. Then he said “Let’s go get a cup of coffee”. When we came back he took a piece of fabric, picked up the hot collar, and easily slipped it on the cool shaft. They're some things you just can’t learn in books.

There were times I would go over to the house on Cartagena and find him in the garage working on some project or other. I could spend hours helping, but I often found it so frustrating. The way he took his time, was slow and deliberate, and I felt like the young racehorse just wanting to bust loose and tear down the track. But no. He took his time. Was methodical. No hurry. It would get done when it got done.

Well, I’m a septuagenarian now, and at times I sit and reflect on how much over the last 20 years or so I’ve slowed down, and become a lot more deliberate, and methodical.

Rarely does a day pass that I don’t put the final touch on something I’ve been working on and say “ You’d be proud of me Uncle George”.

I can’t begin to tell you all the things I learned at Uncle George’s elbow. The time I spent with him was some of the most enjoyable, and rewarding of my life.

I feel the loss of the years I didn’t have with him. Feel somehow cheated. But you could go crazy trying to make sense of it - trying to find a reason why some are taken before their time and others aren’t.

I miss him fiercely.