Photo: Positive Images of Black Males    

I grew up around men who were always working on something. Cars mostly, but they dabbled in repairing lawn mowers, washing machines, TV sets, radios and much more. Radios you ask? Yes radios. Not a solid state radio like we have today, but a radio that used vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes looked similar to a light bulb, except the glass casing was clear and the bulb’s glow was orange rather than white. If a bulb went out, we just walked down to the local corner store and found a replacement tube with the same number or its alternate.

We boys often hung out around my grandfather’s garage, piddling, playing and sometimes doing what we thought was the work of real grown up men. I have a half-inch scar on my nose from being, well, nosey, about the status of an old vacuum tube radio that was sitting on floor in that old garage. I was peeking inside of the radio, counting the number of vacuum tubes that were missing, when my cousin sneaked up behind me and pushed me over. I threw out my hands to break my fall, but my nose still came into contact with a sharp edge of the metal casing that fit over one of those tubes. Fifty some years later I am still contemplating whether to punch him, but since the scar gives me a chiseled look I haven’t pressed the issue.

I don’t think boys have that same sense of curiosity anymore. And even though I am approaching my middle sixties, and I have seen a lot of changes in our social life, I don’t know exactly when that kind of curiosity stopped for young folks. My oldest son, who is now forty-one, belongs to the generation who has given up on curiosity and adventure. Heck, if my son had the money, he would buy a new car if the windshield wiper stopped working.

I am aware that not all men of my generation take to the idea that they can or want to repair a broken item. So maybe this curiosity thing just concerns me or maybe that kind of curiosity is a family trait. Mamma, if she were living, would be the first to rip open a hard drive and put more memory chips in an anemic computer.

My sense is that the kind of curiosity I’m speaking of is not necessarily a hereditary trait. It is more a coming of age kind of thing. Trial by fire or baptism may be a better way of explaining what happens when young boys get the bug to want to dabble in repairing stuff. I got the bug early in my life. I remember many times men gathering around an old car and dissecting its problems. I’m sure that they performed this ritual at all times of the day but for some reason I remember it happening mostly just before dark. Maybe this analysis usually took place after work, often just as the sun was going down.

They would form a circle around an ailing motor that had been removed from a car’s body. These men would haunch down like we thought Indians did before preparing for an attack. And much the same way, they drew lines in the dirt showing the connection between a spark plug and a coil or other parts. They propped their feet up on the frame of the motor and stared at the ailing piece of iron like brain surgeons deciding where to make the first cut in a skull. And they communicated with each other like ancient African engineers may have done when they were deciding how to get water from a nearby lake over to their remote village. They followed some ancient protocol, all talking at once and then falling silent when the leader, usually grandpa, the acknowledged automotive expert, spoke his opinion.

Once a plan was made, one of those men would say, “Someone get a light.” That was the cue. That was the point when, if you were a small curious boy predisposed to adventure you would get a chance to be a part of what real men did.
As soon as I heard the request, I leaped into action. I ran to my dad’s car where he kept a big flashlight from work, or to the garage where the ideal light, a lamp on an extension cord, hung from a nail on the wall. The drop-light, as it was called, was brighter and illuminated the whole subject in question.

There would be a mad competition to be the first to get the “light” and sometimes a small scuffle ensued. But the winner would be rewarded handsomely. Many of my cousins were older and some bigger but, often more agile and swifter. I was always in the middle of the fray. The reward was like the first step to knighthood. The first boy to retrieve a light was crowned a squire, “the holder of the light.” Of course, it was not any specifically prescribed anointment, but it nonetheless was a crowning. I lived to hear that phrase, “Someone get a light,” because that command separated the wheat from the chaff, the chosen from the merely present. I wanted to carry the light. That boy, the one who retrieved the light first, was serving as an apprentice on the road to joining the circle of men.

Holding the light was a process as well as a passion for me. All of the boys, at one time or another, were crowned “holder of the light,” but not all of us were good at it. The cousin that pushed me over into the vacuum tubed radio comes to mind. The worst thing to happen to the light holder was for one of the men to say, “give me the light.” That was an indication that you were not holding the light correctly and that was a sentence that I dreaded. I made sure it never happened to me. Even while playing outside the circle of men, I tried my best to pay attention to what was happening inside the circle. When I got my chance to be a part of the circle I wanted to do my best.

As much as I tried to keep my son involved in what I considered to be things that he should be curious about. I’m just not sure that he ever really cared. I remember once crawling under one of my junker trucks to repair some part that was ill. It was sdark, so I asked my son to assist me by holding the light on the work. It was not long before the light disappeared and oil was running into my eyes. I pushed myself from under the truck and gently inquired what my son was doing. He said, “Daddy, I heard something in the tree.” He was standing there shining the light through the tree branches.

In this throwaway society we now live in, I may be asking too much of our younger generation. Often we don’t keep items much past their shelf life before we upgrade to the newer model. And when we do keep them, we write off repairing them if they break because it is too complicated or the cost is greater than a new one. So, what’s happening to that generation of young boys who peered over a father or grandfather’s shoulder curiously wondering how and where the next part fits? Where are the young boys who are dibbling and dabbling outside the circle of men, those who want to get into the circle just to hold the light?