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I had a '71 Volvo 144S for 11 years. Remember? Volvo used to advertise the average Swede's Volvo was in one owner's hands for 11 years? - Well I simply wanted to be able to say it could be done.
In any case, in the declining years of ownership, when the perennial question arises: "Is this car worth pouring more money into?" I had a Hungarian immigrant mechanic, Percy.
Now, in the old days, when people were actually allowed into the shop, scratch the surface enough and you'd find all right-spirited mechanics were people who had pride in themselves and their jobs. As a bonus, the right mechanics were honest and were homespun philosophers.
A victim of three life-altering circumstances, Percy had learned to sense and to teach when he encountered angst. Percy was the epitomy of the "trusty mechanic". He'd lost his first wife and home to the ugly aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution. He'd lost another home to a wife who took him for everything. He had been a professional man in Hungary who could not practice his profession in Canada for want of proper papers.
In any case, Percy ushered me through an angst-ridden, early-career, financial setback with my 113,000-mile, broken-ringed 144S block with a little philosophy at, you guessed it, 11 years. He said, in preparation for the inevitable sale:
........."Do not fall in love with a piece of property."..................
This advice has followed me through my own sometimes tortuous life.
Another curiosity you may well want to pick up on: Percy always left his vehicles with clean windows. To accomplish this, Percy used old newspaper and a plastic spray gun with vinegar and water in it. One day, even though it was perfectly obvious what he was doing, I asked him what the hell he was doing with those old newspapers and spray when I arrived at the shop to pick up the vehicle. Percy of course said it was simply a very good, even superior, and unwastefully conservative way to clean windows.
I'll always think of Percy when in my enterpreneurial life I encounter the potential for a very great setback: "Do not fall in love with a piece of property". And I'll keep doing my windows with vinegar/water and old newspapers.
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