[Pazuzu]

My old man wore a suit and went to work at some company where he did computer programming, circa 1980. I never viewed him as a "car guy", but I knew he had a garage full of tools, and a rotating selection of crappy late 70's cars that we could afford. I learned about cars next to him as he desperately tried to keep them alive.

I didn't know then that back in the day, he was an old fashioned greaser in Chicago, dragging for pink slips and such. Stealing parts from dumpsters at places like Strange, building Frankenstein cars, dragging on North Ave. I've hung out at cars shows with him in more modern times, and come across more than one person who remembered my dad and the '62 Nova that he had at one point.
I more seriously got into turning wrenches when I got into rock crawling, because that teaches you REAL QUICK how to fix your broken crap while stuck in a ditch in the middle of nowhere. I've swapped clutches in trucks while lying on my back in the sand, I've helped weld differentials using batteries in the middle of the night in the desert, I've stuck random pieces of metal into the fuse slots just to get a truck back to camp. I've also helped get someone home who's leg was crushed between two trucks (Baja truck style speed, someone to stabilize him in the back seat, and lots and lots of whiskey...) and someone who's hand was destroyed because they were holding onto the Jeep halo crossmember when the truck rolled...