High School Auto Mechanics

As I got ready for high school, I got to choose which classes I wanted to take. There was a wider variety of choices. Since I was going to be driving my own car, I wanted to take Auto Mechanics, so that I would be able to take care of the car myself (and I didn't find my Dad to be a good teacher in this department because he would criticize me anytime I merely asked a question about something he considered common knowledge).

But there was a trick to registering for Auto Mechanics. It was set up by year. Auto Mechanics I was a one-hour class for sophomore year, and Auto Mechanics II and III were two-hour classes for the junior and senior years. Only sophomores could register for the I class and they were REQUIRED to take the two-hour classes the next two years. The first year was spent taking an actual class to learn the ins and outs of vehicle motors. The next two years, the students just worked on cars for the whole two hours. The Auto Mechanics teacher had a school-sanctioned side business in which he would buy junked cars, have the students fix them up and then he would sell them for a pretty incredible profit. Basically, he was running a legal child labor chop shop.

This would explain why the teacher was requiring everyone to stick with the class for three straight years. He probably had a couple of I classes in which some of the students didn't stick around for the next two years, which would have reduced his staff. Not to mention that those students probably got in over others who were willing to continue the other classes.

Let's put it like this: The sophomore class had 30 students in it. Let's say that five of the students move out each of the next two years. For the junior and seniors who worked on the cars, that would be a total of 45 students working two hours each, or 90 man-hours a day. Most of the local garages had nowhere near that many people on their staffs. And because the teacher didn't have to pay the students, he made a lot of money selling those re-furbished cars. (My Dad bought me one of those for my first car.)

I guess if I'd really wanted to, I could have gotten out of the junior and senior year classes. However, in retrospect, I really would have been out of my element in the actual class part. The other boys had likely spent a lot of time with their fathers learning how to work on cars. I didn't. I recall the episode of "Happy Days" in which Fonzie is teaching auto mechanics and tries to show how to change a carbuerator. He goes through it so fast that none of the students knows what's going on. I think that's how the class would have been for me.

But I found that I learned a lot about cars from the many situations I managed to get myself into. I still couldn't fix them, but at least I could tell when something is REALLY wrong. I just wished we'd had an Auto Mechanics teacher who would rather educate students than make sure he could always turn a profit.