The Sheet Metal Ship of Theseus

Everyone’s talking about Homer’s The Odyssey these days. Now, don’t get me wrong, Homer’s OK. If you want to get hopped up on hoplites, The Iliad‘s a great read. It’s got Achilles hectoring Hector until they go mano a mano in front of the trailer park of Troy. It used to have a hot Helen, and the original Greeks bearing gifts. Great stuff. Way to go, Homer. The Odyssey however, is plain goofy. As assigned reading, that book got thrown across the room more often than the TV guide.

If you’re in the market for Attic legends, my man Theseus was way more interesting than Odysseus. Only guy to go into the minotaur’s parking garage and come out victorious. United southern Greece under Athenian rule, and founded the cult of Aphrodite. You have to give it up for anyone who can start a cult and make it stick. I guess Waco is the exception that proves the rule.

It’s the ship of Theseus I’m especially interested in.

In Greek mythology, Theseus, the mythical king of the city of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the Minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians would commemorate this by taking the craft on a pilgrimage to Delos to honour Apollo. Over time, various of its timbers rotted and were replaced. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: If no pieces of the original remained in the current ship, was it still the Ship of Theseus? If it was no longer the same, when had it ceased existing as the original ship?

I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully, natch) to convince people that a house is a ship of Theseus, lo these many years. And in my opinion, it’s a good thing it is. A house with components that “never need maintenance” is disposable, not permanent. I testify that people actually used to like caring for their homes. They used to putter around on the weekend, stripping screws, mowing their brown lawns, and wearing out the knees on their jeans. Now people’s houses are plastic, the people mostly are, too, and jeans are purchased with the knees blown out while they’re still on the rack.

It’s lonely out here in the intellectual forest, so I’m forced to quote myself on the topic:

People don’t like this idea. They want to think of their house as a permanent structure. Don’t get me wrong, they want to tinker with it. But they only want to add stuff. They just don’t ever want to maintain the place. They want to buy hot tubs and tanning beds and ceiling fans and exercise bikes and GATHER signs from the Hobby Lobby, and put them hither and yon in their house. They build rooms in the basement to do what they should be doing in the rest of the house, but you can’t watch football with a Live Laugh Love sign hanging over your couch. That’s the living room, where normal people don’t live. The neighbors would mock you.

So, what’s all this got to do with a 1973 Mercury Shitbox Montego? Everything, sorta. It illustrates the maxim, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Simon Fordman, the ingenious and dedicated fellow you see in the video fixing that car, is demonstrating a new generation’s rhyming version of my affection for the Single Family Dwelling Ship of Theseus. My example was sticks and bricks — a house. His is sheet metal and Naugahyde. Either can continue being the original, useful thing, no matter how much of it you have to swap out over the years.

Simon is not alone. Kids these days (I can’t believe I just typed that) are fascinated with old cars in the same way I’m fascinated by old houses. They love wrecks long destined for the crusher, but somehow left rusting away in a field or a barn somewhere. My own son used to look at Bring a Trailer before he was old enough to drive. They see the value in them, no matter how ugly (honestly, a Montego?) they are.

Why aren’t kids as interested in the Ship of Real Estate Theseus as I am? I’m not sure I can blame them. Maybe it’s the total takeover of every aspect of home improvement by the distaff set. Hoary old shows like This Old House used to show actual work being performed by actual men. Now construction cable shows are all girls picking out throw pillows and hanging Gather signs, occasionally pretending to operate tools, while anonymous dusky men scurry around in the background doing all the real work while trying to avoid deportation. When construction becomes Shoe Shopping at Home Depot, maybe men look elsewhere for a safe space. Old cars will fit the bill until men are driven out of that, too.

I’ve posted a handful of car restoration (resurrection, really) videos recently. I especially like the examples with no soundtrack or banter, like this Montego exorcism. It seems like just another way for a new generation to differentiate themselves from an older one, who favored Born to Be Wild background soundtracks for their car repair videos. Working alone is quite common among the younger set, although they have a network of like-minded friends when they need a hand or a carburetor part or something.

Kids figure that a vehicle is a valuable thing, worthy of their busted-knuckle blood and auto parts receipt treasure. Why wouldn’t they? There’s real treasure hidden under the mold and mouse droppings of an abandoned car. Let’s say a new car costs fifty grand. That’s just the cover charge, of course. In addition, you have to pay exorbitant interest on elephantine loans, taxes out the wazoo, and even if it’s brand new, eyewatering mandatory maintenance costs performed by dealer mechanics in lab coats with big clipboards to hold all the zeros on the bill.

Part of this trend is simply what’s possible nowadays. Nothing in any of these car restoration videos is mysterious to me. I’ve done a slipshod job at a lot of the operations depicted. But back in the day, both the information necessary to know what to do, and the availability of car parts to do it, was light years harder to find. These guys are performing miracles, don’t get me wrong, but maybe the most miraculous thing is how easy it is for them to immediately get any kind of gasket, belt, or rebuild kit for 50-year old cars. We had to fight snakes in junkyards to get the same stuff most of the time. And the knowledge? Mostly hard knocks, and hearsay back before the intertunnel. These videos are incredible not only for what they’re accomplishing, but how well they’re depicting it. It’s cinematic shop class, and you could take a whack (literally, sometimes) at fixing a similar car just by watching a few of these videos. And stocking up on Marvel Mystery Oil, transmission fluid, and band-aids.

So stay with me here. If a new car is worth fifty grand plus, then an abandoned car is worth that, too, if all you care about is using it for its intended purpose, which is transportation. In the words of Peter Lawrence of Arabia O’Toole, what seems impossible to some is quite doable if you’re dedicated enough to pull it off. “It’s only a matter of going.”

And bringing a trailer.

I Make a New One

I’ve told you people a million times that I’m prone to hyperbole. So you’re sort of forewarned. Here goes: This Swiss dude is The King of all the anal-retentive restoration project YouTube video generators, and there are legions of them. There can be only one, and he’s it.

I started you out with the book press, a small dose of My Mechanics. It’s just 25 minutes long, because I’m not sure you’re ready for this guy’s whole thang in one eyeball injection. A little later on, I’ll post his three-hour saga of restoring a Datsun 240z with the same level of care he brought to the book press. This is like homeopathy, you can’t tolerate a full dose right away, you have to build up to it.

I could have posted any one of his other videos instead of the book press. An old table lamp. A battered, venerable kitchen scale. A set of headphones it looks like Edith Piaf used. Each, in their own way, is the work of a lunatic. I mean that in the most complimentary way. I love lunacy like that.

There is no rational explanation for the amount of effort and care he puts into every project. There’s no way to torture a spreadsheet to make it profitable on its own merits. Stuff taken off the walls in a defunct Swiss TGI Friday’s and restored to perfection is not a business plan. There’s no way for someone with that particular set of skills to make it pay off by fixing flea market finds.

A highly skilled machinist like him makes bank. He’s the only one who could possibly afford to hire him, because he’s not paying himself. No one is going to give him twenty grand for a restored bookbinding vise, no matter how nice it looks. After watching his 240Z restoration, I wracked my brain thinking of someone who could afford to buy it when he’s done, if you factored in all the highly-skilled effort that went into it. Maybe Toyota? I doubt even they have enough money in their couch cushions. Museums? They don’t have that kind of money in their budgets. And what would they want with these mundane things, just because he made them perfect?

So I settled on the idea that that he does it for one of two other reasons. Either he does it for the love of it, or he does it as performance art. Upon further reflection, neither one of those explanations seems like a viable answer, either.

For love? This guy doesn’t love doing what he’s doing. He’s obsessed. Any girl with a stalker will explain the difference between love and obsession. He is demanding that the world conform to his standard of workmanship. He is a Bridgeport Canute ordering the rusty tide not to rise. Hell, he’s telling it to recede, and he’s getting it to go back out to sea.

He doesn’t just restore things to their original luster. He plows past restoration and fixes any original sins he finds. He grinds off extraneous hidden casting marks that came straight from the factory, and chamfers every single edge. He’s not a fairy godmother. He’s an avenging angel.

As performance art? We’re getting closer here, maybe. He has a prodigious list of Patreons. YouTube videos with the counter in the millions pay fairly well. Selling the objects could never make it pay, but letting people watch you fix them seems like a going concern in the rarified air of millions of YouTube subscribers.

But it’s a very unusual form of performance art, if that’s what it is. He never shows his face, never utters a word, never even grunts when a particularly tough nut won’t turn. Performance art is the land of “look at me.” He doesn’t seem to want to live there. Personality cults require more personality than he feels like delivering.

I wanted very much to put this guy in context, compare him to things that came before him. Shadetree mechanics? Model railroaders? Reproduction woodworkers like Wallace Nutting? Basement boatbuilders? Hell, ship in a bottle makers?

I began to fear that the guy doesn’t even care as much about the objects he works on as much as making a video of what he’s doing. It’s easy to overlook that his videography is better than all the other restoration channels, too. Unlike his competitors, you never fast forward through his vids. He never skips anything he needs to show you, and never lingers on any operation long enough to be boring. And you’ll eventually sit on the edge of your chair, waiting for him to find something that’s not up to (his) snuff, and the chyron to read, “I make a new one,” and watch him do it.

So I don’t know who or what this guy is, or what he represents. But he sure is something, ain’t he?

And if he can bang on this thing for 2.5 years, without even getting to the engine or interior yet, you can spare three hours, can’t you?

A Happy Father’s Day

This video requires a commitment from you. It’s pushing three hours long. In TikTok world, it’s the equivalent of a trip to the moon. But it’s worth it, for various reasons.

The Tube is awash with people bringing a trailer and rescuing cars from barns, and from other guys with trailers. I’ve watched a lot of them. I especially enjoy the fellows that put the cars back the way they were when they were new. The fellows that paint 1970s Toyotas the color of a stripper’s toenails after adding a supercharged 428, not so much.

I think these fellers at Turnin’ Rust are a little different, and more commendable. Like many who stumble on internet notoriety, they’ve cycled through a handful of names while deciding which side of the bread the butter is on. They’ve been at it much longer, and without a camera pointed at them for most of it. They’re a father/son team (with little sister recording), laboring in obscurity in a very obscure place, Bogata Texas. It’s pronounced “buh GAY tah,” I think. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I used to live in Maine, and we pronounce Calais “callous,” so I never cast any pronunciation aspersions.

Well, however you say it, Bogata Texas is The Last Picture Show in the flesh. It’s been shedding population for forty or fifty years, and has been whittled down from 1,500 people to about 1,000. The Bushes, Wyatt and Lance, have been fixing cars in Bogata for whoever’s left. Their skill set is an interesting one. They’re completely accustomed to resurrecting autos too far gone for anyone else to even attempt them, simply to get them back to running, and being useful again.

This isn’t Jay Leno’s operating room for Maseratis. While it’s interesting to see old supercars getting their very molecules polished enough to become museum pieces, I can’t count it as useful behavior. Making something work again, restoring its usefulness for regular people, is something else again. And just how many guys who’ve had a taste of TV notoriety have a zillion-dollar personal car collection? I’ve lost track. It can be a little off-putting. A museum for one person sounds like something Saddam Hussein would enjoy. Or maybe Tutankhamen.

The Turnin’ Rust folk’s specialty appears to be old Volkswagens. That’s not what I’d expect from someone fixing cars in the flatlands between Dallas and Oklahoma, but what do I know? Beetles were cheap and easy to fix back in the day. My brother had a VW, and it was a blessing that it was easy to fix, because it needed fixing all the damn time. But that was just a testament to its value to the impoverished. Cheap enough to buy, easy enough to fix is a mostly forgotten set of requirements for a daily driver. Cars today are mostly interchangeable, and ultimately disposable when they need substantial repairs.

The father/son team features a series of videos with no speaking, and no music. Those are a tonic for a weary internaut. They work together wordlessly, each knowing the other’s minds, and accomplish all sorts of difficult things without any chafing between them. The stuck bolts provide the only friction.

This video has plenty of discussion in it. It’s not surprising. Getting a 1947 International truck running after being left to rust in a field for decades is hard. I’ve picked this video out of their catalog of similar projects because it featured the longest list of seemingly insuperable impediments to their mission: to simply get the thing to run.

The opportunities to give up for good reason that they squandered along the way boggled my mind. They never complained, never flagged. No matter how hard it was, they kept going. And like all of their videos, there’s no cursing, and no high-fives. When things go badly, they regroup and continue. When things go right, they thank the lord instead of strutting and preening. And they do it all, literally, as shade tree mechanics. Their truck tire engine stand is marvelous.

And the grin on the phlegmatic, avuncular dad’s face at around 2:48:00 alone is worth the price of admission. The son is grinning, too, but it’s different. I know dad’s grin. I’ve experienced it once or twice with my own sons. If you could bottle it, you’d sell more of it than Jack Daniel’s ever could.