Ever since I first tried to swap out a transmission in my 1972 Chevrolet Impala and nearly lost my left gonad under its gross tonnage, mechanics hasn’t really been my thing.

It was a gorgeous hot rod so accustomed to lightning speed that a patch of grass had sprouted through the back seat floorboard, and that was when I could get it running.

Not just cars. Sure, scraping the flesh off my knuckles and inventing new swear words is bad enough, but my distaste covered everything mechanical — from Pez dispensers to flux capacitors.

If it had parts, and if it occasionally needed to be fixed, I was demonstrably inept and thoroughly disinterested. I told myself my talents lay elsewhere, in the humanities and the arts, not so much the rather humdrum pursuit of making clocks tick.

Electronics I could handle. Not circuitry, or anything requiring a diagram or even a rudimentary sense of how electrons flow. But give me a Nintendo or a VCR, or later a Blu-Ray player and a Playstation, and I could work minor miracles.

Otherwise, I wasn’t handy and didn’t particularly want to be. I’ll pay people to do it, I told myself, after I publish the novel.

Then I got older, and adopted a father-in-law.

Given my choices in life, money has always been — and remains — exceedingly hard to come by. I’m still working on that novel.

Given that I smoke cigarettes, and love the sweet sense of comfort that comes from a Dutch Brothers latte, any reduction in expenses is a boon to our bottom line.

And having to pay a repairman every time something goes awry loses me buckets of frothy milk and adds healthy years to my charred lungs. Not acceptable.

Then of course there’s the loss of pride that arises when the dishwasher squawks and spits brown suds, and my lovely wife’s first thought is to call her Dad.

Some men are good with tools, some are handy, and a precious few can fix anything broken with Q-tips, a ball of twine, one wad of sugarfree gum, and a level.

This is Roger, my father-in-law.

At first, after Amy and I had just gotten married, it seemed convenient, even lucky, to have our very own Tim Allen on call to come to the rescue whenever a problem arose. And they frequently did. Cars, washers, bathtubs, toilets, doors — you name it.

I’ve come to resent his skills in this regard, and the fact that Daddy gets to play hero while I stand over his shoulder and hand him the wrench.

To address these issues, I’ve taken an interest in gardening, in some light maintenance work around the house, and in maintaining our home.

I now like how it feels to encounter a problem, even one mechanical in nature, and deal with it; to research the machine, determine how it works, and where it’s gone wrong.

Hell yeah. Or, booyah.

Our dryer was a recent casualty. Four kids and two adults, one dog and a cranky cat translates into dirty laundry. I applaud my wife for keeping up on it. Our domestic contract has recently been amended to put me on dishes and her on laundry, and so far we’ve never been happier.

Yet take away one cog in the well-oiled familial machine, and the world threatens to come undone.

So the wife, panicked that the house would flood to the rafters with an ocean of dirty skivvies, soiled bibs, errant socks and her endless supply of yoga pants, did the natural thing.

She called her dad.

Maybe I was tired of playing second fiddle. Exhausted with being outshone by her overly capable father. Anxious to set a good example for our kids. Hoping to earn some points for later use in the boudoir.

Whatever the reason, as she described the problem to Roger, I waved my hands in the air, pantomimed the turning of a wrench, and pounded on my chest like a junior gorilla suddenly challenging for first banana.

Lovely Amy. She refrained from rolling her eyes, or smirking at my monkey dance. She waited for her dad to dispense his typically sage advice, then said the magic words:

“But James wants to give it a crack first. He thinks he can fix it.”

To my surprise, Roger was relieved. He sounded almost ecstatic as Amy wrapped up their conversation.

“Tell James thank you,” he said, breathlessly. “Remember to thank James.”

The next morning, the wife and kids skedaddled for high ground and left me alone with a set of tools, the Internet, a balking dryer and assload of angst. My time to shine.

I searched YouTube. Found the right model. Watched a video three times fast, absorbing by osmosis the methods for taking said appliance apart.

In the laundry room, I did exactly as the rotund repairman told me, and before I knew it, the dryer fell open to reveal its rather simple mechanisms.

From earlier research, I knew the likely culprit was the blower belt. And, just like the video had said, that belt had come loose and fallen neatly to the floor. I found it there, amid melted crayons and a misshapen hair pin.

Feeling confident and inspired, I continued on.

The belt was normally attached at two points: the blower, and the motor. As the motor turned, the belt spun and drove the blower, thereby providing enough air to help the clothes dry and vent the machine properly.

It had just fallen off. Wow. That was easy.

I recollected from earlier that the belt had to attach to the motor first, then the blower. So, flush with impending victory, I looped it around the motor connection and stretched it toward the blower.

No dice. I took a deep breath, focused all my strength, and tried again. Nothing changed.

I used a screwdriver as a lever, then a random assortment of other objects horribly unsuited to the task. Sweat began to pour. Blood pressure creeped.

I swore. A lot.

Then I went back to the oracle. The Internet Gods were kind, and right off the mark I found the same site, with the same directions. First the motor, then the blower. Start the belt on one corner of the cog, and roll it forward to grab hold.

Aha! The missing piece.

I ran back to the wash room and promptly slipped on the linoleum where water from the undried load had leaked. My knee slammed straight into the machine, and pain shot down my leg.

In my excitement, I ignored the ache and laid out flat in the water to try my new method. I sneezed and wet lint splashed off the ground and into my mouth.

Abandoning any sense of decorum or grace, I flopped like a crazy carp on the floor long enough to squeeze both my hands into the guts of the machine. First the motor, then the blower. I rolled it forward, and yet again, off it came, as did a small chunk of skin from my right thumb.

Bleeding, wet and delirious, I laid there for the next 30 minutes, over and over trying to slip a slim piece of rubber over the cogs it was designed to fit.

In exhaustion, I finally quit trying and just laid there, breathing deep to calm my nerves and clear my sinuses of lint and fiber. I may have slept. I don’t know.

I do know that soon after, I heard the unwelcome sound of the family van creeping into the driveway, gravel popping like corn, the screeching voices of the children so painfully full of joy.

I quickly rolled onto my side and stuck my hands up in the dryer to seem busy. My wife appeared in the washroom doorway.

“How’s it going?” She was careful to keep her voice neutral, her consonants soft to avoid provoking the beast.

I played it off.

“Good, good — I got it all taken apart and found the belt on the ground,” I said brightly. “Now I just have to attach the belt and it should be good to go.”

I scrambled to my feet, covered in grime and sweat and blood and fabric softener, a stocking tied around my head as a makeshift sweatband.

I smiled, and she flinched.

“I’m going to smoke first,” I said, brushing passed her. “Having a hard time getting the belt on the gear thingy.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Not at all,” I said, desperately trying to hide the fact that I was out of breath and hoarse from all the swearing. “It’s got to go on the engine first, then the blower wheel.”

I sucked the life out of a cigarette, hoping to find an artful way to tell Amy that she should call her Dad. Before I’d found one, she emerged onto the back porch, wiping her delicate hands on a dish towel.

“Got it,” she said.

I could’ve strangled her, or lifted her up onto my shoulders and paraded her around the yard for saving me from any further fruitless attempts. Pride be damned.

“Uh, how?”

“I tried putting it on the blower first, then the engine,” she said cheerfully. “It rolled right on.”

Later, when Dad called to check in, Amy described what had gone wrong with the machine, and what was necessary to get it fixed. She laughed a bit, and smiled like the teenager I fell in love with.

“I know, I know,” she said, looking at me. “James fixed it.”

All these years, the old man wasn’t after my glory. He never sought to be the hero, nor the Wunderkind Repairman. He just did what had to be done.

Judging by the ballyhoo I heard on the other end of that phone line then, he was more than ready for me to finally take up some slack.

###

James Faulk is a writer living in Eureka. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com