Classism in the USA

 Classism in the USA

I have been thinking about classism for many years. I have lived on the border between the two classes all my life. I went to college to become a Mechanical Engineer, ran out of money, went into debt, and fell back to Mechanic. Through seventy years of fixing things, making things, and designing things, I have skills, but I’ll never be able to join the elite class.

I didn’t get that all important degree. But I could write a book about it!

When I went to college, I didn’t own a car. I rode a bicycle. I had bought it when I had a paper route in Merced, California. It came new with a Sturmey-Archer three speed hub, but I needed more gear ratios, so I added four more sprockets back on the wheel, and two more on the crank up front, with derailleurs to change the chain from one to the other. I’m sure it was the only one like it in town in 1961 - a 24 speed Schwinn!

When I dropped out of college after my freshman year, I found work in a carburetor rebuilding company near San Jose, California. In about a year, I worked myself up to dyno testing carburetors. I could identify and adjust any carburetor from Ford Model T’s to Carter AFB’s. While I worked there I bought a Chevrolet Corvair from a coworker and, of course, learned all about its idiosyncrasies and how to fix them.

Years later I got a call from my cousin Jim, who was broke down beside the road in Fresno, California, in his Corvair. He said it just went bang and stopped. I tossed my toolbox in the back of my Corvair and drove fifty miles south to see what went wrong. When I lifted the motor cover (hood in the back) I saw a twisted tangle of spark plug wires. The distributor had seized and rotated. 

It was at night, and no parts stores were open, and it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. We were both broke, with just enough money for gas money, maybe.

I removed the whole distributor from his engine, drove out the pin and removed the drive gear, then tapped the stuck shaft out with a hammer. There was melted and rewelded aluminum on the shaft, which I filed off with a smooth file, and polished the shaft with some fine grit sandpaper. I wiped it clean and got it spinning freely again. 

The distributor had a small tube on the side where oil needed to be squirted on every oil change to lubricate the distributor, but if you weren’t familiar with Corvairs, that was easy to miss.

I reassembled the distributor, made sure the points were correctly set, turned the crankshaft to the timing marks, put the distributor back into the motor, with the rotor aimed at the number one spark plug direction, then had Jim just turn on the ignition without bumping the starter. I slowly rotated the distributor until the points sparked and then locked the distributor down. I put on the cap and had him start the engine. It started instantly, and after it warmed up and came off the choke, I blipped the throttle a couple of times to make sure the vacuum retard and centrifugal advance mechanisms were working right. 

Cousin Jim was amazed that I could fix his engine without needing even a penny worth of parts. He went on his way, just a few hours later than planned. 

I became well known in Merced as a good Corvair mechanic, and sometimes the Chevrolet garage would send me a Corvair for fixing, because the local Chevy mechanics hated the things. They even gave me a 40% discount on parts.

I had a girlfriend at that time who was going to college to get her degree. She had an aunt with money, I think. She eventually got her degree and found a good office job at the courthouse processing traffic fines. But when her little Chevy needed work, she brought it to me.

When she insisted that she wouldn’t marry me until I got a degree, I found another girlfriend, who loved me the way I was, and stayed with me for fifty years until her death.

That’s when I began to understand the class divide in America. 

There are those who know things, and have the proof, on parchment. And then there are those who do things, and get their hands dirty at times. 

The divide has only increased during my lifetime, and is now a huge gulf. I feel stretched between the two classes. Mechanical Engineering is the college course that spans the gap, in my opinion. 

I didn’t get my degree, so I am stuck in the underclass. But I learned enough in school and life experience that I can understand the upper class. I’ll never be a professional, or managerial type, or an educator, but I can write and spell, most of the time. 

On the radio, Ed Schultz, the Rush Limbaugh of the Left, used to define the classes as those who shower before they go to work, and those who shower up after work. 

About sums it up, I think.