#10 Closeted Gear head

I thought I would point out that I'm sort of a closeted Gear head. I started learning about engines in high school. I took an automotive class and I begin to understand how everything worked from the beginning because they taught it very well. I took it for about 3 years and you learn a lot doing that and they were okay with that bringing our cars in to work on. I had helped and been around my grandpa fixing things and my dad but I never really caught on that much. One time my Dad and my brother were going to go take a 283 out of a Chevy Belair. He was so over done that instead learning some stuff we were all scared to death all day that he was going to get mad and beat us so it wasn't exactly the best Father/son time. He had told me at some point take this bolt out behind the the engine. I didn't know what to do he didn't show me and about a half an hour later I hadn't done anything yet. It never occurred to him to show me how to do it and it it seemed like failure to ask for help.

The auto/diesel 101 class in high school helped as well as my training in the US Navy Seabees A school. I've always kind of in willing to do things on my own.I rebuilt an entire Ford Falcon engine start to finish out in Mom's back yard and it was absolutely under a shade tree. I tried to take the transmission out and take all those synchronous gears all apart and get it all back together but I gotta tell you that does really require some training and I never got it that transmission back together again.

Usually when I destroy something, I'm learning. When I'm learning, its costing me money. So I have a lot of redneck and gearhead tendencies but not full blown 100 % all day. At one point during my messy period, I had 8 vehicles in my middle yard. Four of them would crank but some didn't run. Most were in some state of disassembly and the 54 Chevy truck body had been hanging from a tree for two years.

I have shied away from wanting to actually be called a redneck because of a certain image that it creates. I have all the qualifications but the phrase tends to represent the confederate flag and dragging people of color behind old trucks with chains until dead. I will remain a closeted redneck until the image improves. That means you won't know it at first glance but when you get to know me better youll figure me out. I have become a pretty good handy man along the way and I always try to fix everything myself initially. Sometimes I have to call in the professionals and I do. A 100% /full time redneck / gear head would never give in and pay anyone to fix anything so I have found balance in this area.