Waltzing Sparkplugs

I was eager to buy my own auto repair shop. I got a bank loan and decided I would work seven days a week to make it successful. Whatever it took, I wanted to be the best. I got lucky when a local and well-respected shop went on the market. The list price was more than I could afford, but there was room to negotiate and the owner was old and eager to sell, I understood. He had fixed and repaired tens of thousands of cars in his lifetime, but Father Time caught up to him and he decided to sell his shop. He told me that he wanted to make sure the right person got it and he was impressed by me. We worked out an agreeable price and he left me his tools, which I didn't really need, but that I politely accepted because I could tell it would mean something to him if I did.

 

"Retiring to Florida?" I grinned.

 

"Something like that," he replied. My career was just beginning while his was coming to a close. He didn't appear connected to much of anything in the shop, nor did he seem to have much difficulty saying goodbye as he walked around one last time ensuring he told me about things important about the building that I should know. I thought with all the years and hours he had spent here sweating and covered in grease, it might have been more difficult for him to say goodbye. But he smiled politely, handed me the keys, and firmly shook my hand. His hands were hard and stained from decades of paint and grease.

 

"Are you going to miss the place?"

 

"No," he replied bluntly. "I spent too many hours here. Missed too many baseball games, dance recitals, school plays, birthdays, dinners, dates with my wife. I worked most holidays," he went on. "And over the years, I slowly began to smell like this place. My blood became oil and my eyes saw more transmissions and mufflers and timing belts than they did moments with my wife and kids. I became a tool little different than a wrench or a floor-jack."

"But you were the best at what you did," I complimented. "My dad and grandpa, they wouldn't take their cars to anyone else."

 

"Yeah. The best," he sniggered. Then he smiled with a weary expression of reluctant gratitude. He looked tired. "You know, son, I was the best at nothing that mattered, and the worst at everything that ever did."

 

With that, he wished me luck and left. I took a breath and thought of what he said. I didn't quite understand what he meant at the time. His reputation was stellar in the community and it was an honor to take over his shop. I hoped to be like him.

 

My wife was expecting our first child at the time and she came in to congratulate me and to take pictures of our new business. I marveled at how beautiful she looked, even in the florescent lights of the shop, standing on a grease-stained floor. She was wearing a blue sundress and the baby appeared to be busting at the seams to come into this world. It was up to me to be successful, to give them all the things they wanted. To make sure they had nice clothes, a good home. To make sure my daughter had toys, that she went to a nice school, and come time, that she had things like glasses, braces, a college fund, on and on. I must have felt what the old man felt in 1965 when he first stood where I was standing.

 

Over the next few days, I thought about what he had said to me. I obsessed about it, really. Being the best at nothing that mattered and the worst at everything that ever did. And of all the things he missed, not as a necessary sacrifice, but as being an irreversible mistake. Then as I was moving my things into the office, I found something odd in the office in a drawer. Two old spark plugs soldered together with copper wire for arms and legs, waltzing on a washer. I chuckled but then stared at it for a long while. Then I put it on my desk next to a picture of my wife and a sonogram picture of our unborn daughter. It was important to me before I realized its true importance. Its meaning.

 

A customer of the old man's came to me to have his car repaired. He said if Newt, the old man, sold me the place, I must be a decent mechanic because Newt was that way. As I finished his car, I asked him about Newt and he told me that he was an honest, reliable, and hard-working man. Best damn mechanic around, he added. I asked him about Newt's family, his wife and kids, and he shook his head.

 

"I don't much know none of that, son. He never talked about them. I suppose he had some, but he was always working. I think his wife left him and took the kids. I don't know for sure, though. We only talked about carburetors and engines. Yeah. Come to think of it, she did leave him. Patty was her name. Pretty woman, she was."

 

I thanked him for his business and he left. I sat at the desk later that afternoon and looked at those old sparkplugs. How they were one. I picked it up and got lost in thought. I've never been one to much appreciate art, but never has any piece of art meant more to me. It was then that I decided, as a better business practice, that I would be closed on weekends. No exceptions. Closed on all major holidays. And each year I would take two uninterrupted weeks of vacation. The same would go for my employees. My life would not be sweat and bled out in a shop fixing broken engines and changing brakes. It would be spent at all the ballgames, barbecues, holiday parties, dance recitals that Newt missed. It would be spent with my family. I would never miss dinner and I would always be home to tuck my kids in and to kiss my wife goodnight.

 

No matter the business I lost by doing so, I absorbed it. It is well worth it. A small price to pay. Newt did much more than sell me his shop at a fair price. In a simple and brief conversation and with his little piece of art, perhaps unwittingly, he reminded me of the importance of what really matters in life. I sometimes feel a sense of sadness looking at those waltzing sparkplugs, knowing he had made them once upon a time when it was too late. Maybe thinking of dancing with his wife at their wedding. But still, I was grateful for what they did for me. Art is supposed to inspire and if that is the basis for its value, those sparkplugs are priceless. As a rule, whenever there is music, I always ask my wife to dance and I thank Newt, all the while. I am the man I want to be, thanks to him. Someone asked me how I knew they were waltzing. I said because sparkplugs don't dance.