[john70t]

I didn't have any family memories to cars in my youth as they were just appliances to get somewhere.

I did have an inherent curiosity from age 6-7 and recognized the bicycle shop welded the frame lopsided/short after the trailing frame legs of the beautiful Schwinn broke and needed to be fixed but the rim rubbed as a result. That was not a positive encounter as I recall. Dad was not mechanically inclined, unlike his father. A gift of a Sears bike at the age of 7-9 in a box had to go to the same shop to get assembled, as neither one of us was able to finish it quickly enough. There wasn't much time spent together on that project. He has since passed years ago but I am glad we shared other good times together.
With his passing, the term "Life is short." should never be underestimated..
Mom on the other hand had a curious habit and tended to outlaw or sabotage anything us kids seriously got into regardless if it was a positive thing. She was exceptional at other things however. Life is a trade off. In retrospect, we should always consider the memories of our youth can be corrupted in many different ways and accept our own mistakes and flaws but that tomorrow is always a brand new day. Some experiences may be hard coded as negatives,but in the long run they can also be positives.

Overall, that idea of self-sufficiency and connection to understanding mechanical ways was not a natural hallmark in my own youth, but that should never be a deterrent to anyone with perhaps the same type of middle class upbringing. Or any class for that matter.

I started to get the generalized mechanical bug again in late high school after building so many misc bicycles from the dumpsters and taking my motorcycle and cars to shops at great expense (for the hard working young myself) but then not having them fixed correctly as a result. There was some outright fraud a few times. That occurred enough times to question if I couldn't even fix it as a result. It shouldn't be that difficult, should it?

My own Porsche bug happened at about about 17 when a friend's father somehow let me drive his early car on a smooth dirt road. He told me to slow down. I was cruising light in third gear but instead of 35mph it was 65. That was some car and I still owe him a gift of gratitude if that is still possible. I've never forgotten that experience of bliss.

The epiphany of realizing that all mechanical things are just objects formed and created and then attached together for a specific purpose gradually occurred and is still occurring to this day. Big parts are the same as small parts. In mid-life I try to remain a student of what I still do not know which is vast. But all these objects can be handled by the normal person when they understand how to with the available objectives and resources. The complexity and interaction of different systems changes over time, and the end result is to accomplish the same goal given different circumstances. There is always a solution to be accomplished however the difficulty. It doesn't always happen the first attept but perseverance usually wins out at the end. Learning from