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“patient help” is required at our home/shop/office. A place where there are no little items for me to grab to purchase on the way out. For instance, recently when he needed to mount the front wheel on one of his restoration projects.
He called me one day from his shop (which is a short 500 foot walk from the home office) and asked if I could come down and “real quick” shove
D
o you need my help? If not, I’ll go look around.”
There was a long pause. I stood patiently waiting for him to answer. Time passed. I wondered if he knew I existed. We were standing in the aisle of a hardware store. I’ve spent a lot of time standing in aisles at hardware stores with the guy-in-the-garage while he painstakingly searches for just the right nut, bolt or washer.
Still waiting for him to answer my question. Because if he didn’t need me, this particular hardware store had a lot of interesting items that I’d happily wander around and check out while he spent the required hour or two searching. I suppose I’m exaggerating slightly. But that’s what it always feels like.
“Here, write the quantities and amounts on this bag.” He hands me some washers and a little paper sack. Then I hear him groan.
“This is why I like to come here alone!” he says and looks right at me. “What am I doing?” I ask
exasperatedly, since I can’t imagine a single thing I have done to annoy him. I haven’t even told him any interesting tidbits of info totally unrelated to what he’s doing, which is rare. I haven’t jabbered and talked. I haven’t sighed with impatience. And I certainly haven’t groaned. Which is more than I can say for him.
He finally answered. “I feel under pressure searching when you’re standing there waiting.”
“I said I would go look around,” I reminded him, starting just slightly to lose my patience.
“No!” he said, “You can read the prices better than I can.”
Ah, so he forgot his readers again and what he really needs are my eyes (complete with tri-focals) and my mouth, but only to say prices as requested, otherwise I shouldn’t speak.
I must have violated that cardinal rule when I asked if he needed my help. I always make sure to grab myself a little item or two as we leave the hardware store as a reward for my patience and this time was no exception.
But then there are the times where my
I survived the heat, only to enter his shop and find him searching for his masking paper and tape. This alarmed me. “What are you doing?” I
asked. “This will just take a
minute,” he said. Which was my first clue that I had some waiting time before this “real quick” job got done.
Sure enough, he had decided there was some flaw in the paint on the hub of this front wheel. I think it was that the hue of paint was not exact. It was a hue that 99.9% of the people on earth would think matched the color it was supposed to be, but the .01% of people who viewed motorcycles the way he does would notice a glaring error in the shade of gray and fortunately for everyone, he happened to have the correct color on hand. So I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Periodically he
6 S&S OFF ROAD MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2011 -
www.SS-OffRoadMagazine.com
the axle through the front wheel so he could get it mounted.
First of all, I did mention the walk was short. But when its 115+ degrees out, short suddenly seems a little longer.
Restoration of Japanese Vintage
Dirt Bikes or
would look up at me and say something like “I guess you have a lot of work to do . . .” and then immediately he was engrossed again in the touch-up. Or “I’m probably keeping you from your work . . . .” But the funny thing is his attention span in communicating with me in the midst of a restoration project is so brief, that even if I were to answer, the words would be completely lost on him. So I keep quiet.
The wheel eventually got mounted, the magazine eventually got produced that month and in complete fairness to him, shortly after this incident he took me away on a three-day trip to Yuma, Arizona, a place I mentioned once to him that I’d like to go to visit. And I didn’t have to do any unplanned waiting on that trip. But as for the guy-in- the-garage, he had to wait while I found the cell phone I lost, wait while I found the directions to the motel I thought I had tucked in my calendar, and by far the most stressful, wait while I searched for the envelope of trip money I lost. Not to worry though, there it was, laying in the parking lot of the Yuma mall. Just waiting for us to find it. I guess waiting is a two-way street.
Flat Trackers 1960’s through 1980’s - Steve Kukla S&S Publishing, Inc. 760-767-4680
VOLUME 29, NO. 12 • SEPTEMBER 2011 PUBLISHER
S&S Publishing, Inc. SEDITORS
teve Kukla Sherri Kukla
DrCOLUMNISTS
. Gary De Forest Tom Severin
PHOTOJOURNALIST Rodney Rutherford
CONTRIBUTORS Del Albright
Bob Alexander Jamey Blunt
C&C Race Photos Angela Cook
Roy Denner - In Memory Matt Lindsay
Photos by Grumpy Greg Robertson Richard Stuelke Trackside Photos
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Tim Townsley
ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER Charlie Kukla
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