Published: April 17, 2008 11:37 pm            

ADAMCZYK: Survival skills for the millennium

Springtime offers, among other things, the opportunity to closely examine the estate, so to speak. It’s the time to go outdoors, look at the house, and see what fell off during the winter. Check what needs to be cleaned, painted and/or fixed, then endeavor to do something about it. My Kenmore backyard, for example, has had a surfeit of Other People’s Garbage under all that snow. The days when the weather forecasts promised us “significant and potentially damaging winds,” and there were plenty of those, all seemed to occur the night before the weekly trash pickup in my neighborhood. As the snow piles melted, I discovered junk mail back there that wasn’t mine, and cardboard boxes from pizzerias I’d never patronized.

That, and a bent front porch gutter, is the complete damage report. On an upcoming warm day, I’ll grab the stepladder, go up there with a screwdriver and about $3 in hardware, and reattach the gutter to the porch. Or, I can find someone to do it, and be charged about $70 for a “service call.” I think I’ve discovered another allegory for 21st-century life in America.

We live in a society in which goods tend to be cheap and services tend to be expensive. A dead car is brought back to use with the removal and replacement of a tiny but crucial part, at $80 an hour. A good birthday cake can cost $20, but is made with only a few cents’ worth of eggs, flour and sugar.

Make up your own metaphor. While doing-it-oneself flourishes in situations of scarcity (the streets and apartments of modern-day Havana, for example), it should likewise be of particular value in the circumstances we presently face, the cusp of a recession. Now is the time to learn to fix what can be fixed; in several months we may not be able to afford it.

It is also the time to learn whatever can be learned about the equipment and processes of one’s own life, for economics and for efficiency. People who know how to use a toilet should know how to fix a toilet. If you watch a lot of television, you should know the purpose of every button on your remote. While you might not want to poke around the innards of your personal computer with a magnifying glass and a soldering tool, it will nonetheless pay dividends to “develop a proficiency” (to use a delicious old Army term) in operating each available program.

This is not merely the old coot in the hardware store talking. These are survival skills for the millennium.

If it takes the imprimatur of popular culture to get you going, be assured there are magazines, Web sites and cable television channels galore that encourage this sort of behavior, under the guise of “lifestyle.” This category of media assault is certainly eager to sell you stuff, but along the way you’ll learn the things your parents never taught you, and the things your grandchildren know but aren’t telling: Hang a bookshelf, cook in a wok, re-grout a shower stall, make your hair hipper — whatever you need.

There is even a new angle to the time-worn craft of making art out of junk (what the artsy crowd calls “found items”). Classes are available, in Buffalo and elsewhere, in the practice of taking broken electronic toys and appliances, and re-working, or “hacking” them. That alarm clock that used to buzz angrily, or the Krusty the Clown model that once intoned “hey hey” at the push of a button, can be tinkered with to perform an assortment of vulgar and novel actions. Learn a skill such as this, and that modernist phrase “not worth repairing” suddenly becomes irrelevant.

As any attorney, plumber or 70-year old marathon runner can tell you, a modicum of expertise makes plenty of negative expressions irrelevant. A recent advertising campaign with the catchphrase “impossible is nothing” pointed out that “impossible” was once synonymous with “can’t be done.” It now merely indicates the starting point of a goal, so don’t be afraid of the impossible. That’s a refreshing way to go through life.

I developed this respect for widespread capability years ago, on the shop floor of a local General Motors plant. While the grunt work tended to be monotonous and oppressive, the conversations were startlingly enlightening. Hunters and farm boys from Niagara County mixed with inner-city residents, immigrants and part-time college kids all traded opinions and understanding. Anyone with their eyes and ears open could learn a wealth of technique and theory they would never otherwise know.

The guy who goes up the ladder to fix my gutter won’t be as stylish as the ones on the House and Garden Channel, but he won’t be penciling dollar signs onto an invoice, either. It’ll be me, who learned long ago which end of a screwdriver to hold, and progressed from there.

Ed Adamczyk is a Kenmore resident whose column appears Fridays in the Tonawanda News. Contact him at EdinKenmore@gmail.com.

        

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