Space, the final frontier. Part One.
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| photosource:popularmechanics.com I was thinking about Space when I was a kid in grade school, but not in the same way. |
Capt. Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) has a Jaguar XJS convertible exactly like mine! I highly doubt that he is as constantly concerned with space as I am.
I'm talking about the space that are cars occupy. The real estate.
As well as the unreal estate.
Space is a limited resource like money, time, and energy.
I suppose that if you are lucky enough to live on a couple of acres you might have a different opinion.
Each of our cars takes up space. Not only physical space but mental, and physic space.
We know that it's there. If not in the forefront of our thoughts than it is buried slightly in our subconscious.
This line of thinking leads too:
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Garages that I have known and loved.
At different times in our lives we are faced with certain opportunities and certain limitations.
Like most of my peers, I grew up in a neighborhood of small houses with attached garages and driveways. As a kid growing up I didn't have any space that I could call my own.
Whatever space I used was communal space, well, family space. My folk's garage and yard.
But I was lucky to have that. Once I moved out on my own it was on me.
Limitations arose due to my financial status, and living arrangements. There were a couple of years where minimal wrenching was going on. I was almost like a normal person, I had a car that I'd drive and wash every couple of weeks. But some guys had it worse.
The least favorable arrangement is when you are forced to do any servicing and repair of your vehicle while it is parked in the street. I've seen lot's of instances where guys have to change starters and do brake jobs while their car sits parked at the curb. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Many car guys have managed to keep their cars running and some have even built modified cars under these trying conditions.
An improvement to this situation is if you have a parking space available in a parking lot. At least you don't have to worry about passing traffic and it might be closer to your apartment. You might even be lucky enough to have a car port, which beats having the sun beating down on you. However your rental agreement and manager might have different ideas.
A driveway right in front of, or next to your house, is even better. More privacy and more convenience.
If that driveway leads to a garage, then you really have it made.
The first house that I remember is the one from my early childhood.
It was a small two bedroom house with an attached single car garage and a single driveway. It had two clam shell type doors. The back of the garage was the home of the washing machine and a set of those double compartment concrete sinks that the washer emptied into. The washer was a tub type with power rollers built in the top. My Mom would would feed the wet clothes through the rollers to squeeze the water out. I used to enjoy watching my Mom doing that and as young kids we once got the idea of trying it for ourselves. Putting small objects, plastic army men and eventually my older brother's arm through it!
 photo source: Walmart |
| I don't recall my Mom looking that happy doing laundry. |
There was still enough room in the garage to park a single car, though not much else. My Dad took a correspondence course and taught himself to repair electronic devices like radios and televisions. He needed a place to work on these devices. He built a wall separating the area where the car was parked and the laundry area. He left a door sized opening on one side. He built a cantilevered work bench that allowed the hood of the car to fit underneath, the upper part of the wall was covered in peg board which allowed for airflow and the opportunity to hang items. The bottom of wall was covered with plywood.
The workmanship was quite good as my Dad was a careful worker. My Dad used the space as a workshop as he started up a garage based business for radio and TV repair. The car didn't go into the garage too much after that. But he only had a single car at that time, a new jet black, 1959 Chevy Impala two door hardtop, a car worthy of it's my post someday. He knew that we would often play in the garage on rainy days. Like many parents of the days he felt that the cold concrete floor was bad for us to walk on. He wanted something that would isolate us from the cold, but not get dirty like carpet.
He decided to lay down tongue and groove floorboards that had been salvaged from a torn down house. I remember how my brother and I went with Dad to the salvage yard. We were quite young, I think that my older brother was in kindergarten, of course I was even younger. We were running around the yard, climbing piles of salvaged lumber when my brother managed to step on a board with a nail sticking out of it. The nail went through the sole of his shoe and into his foot. Perhaps a half inch. Luckily my Dad had finished the order and he carried my brother to the car and straight home. My Mom cleaned up the wound and called the local Doctor, who still made house calls in those days.
A little cleaning with iodine, a tetanus shot, some bandaging and my brother was recuperating.
My Dad put the planks down and we spent several years of our childhood playing in that garage.
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| It looked a bit nicer when we lived there in the early 1960's, bigger too. Actually the house right next door is more representative of the neighborhood. |
The funny thing is that my Dad didn't spend any time working on his car in the garage. Maybe because it was a new car? Not a bad idea.
The next house we lived in was on a corner lot. It had a detached two car garage. The garage was located at the far end of the yard with the first overhead door that I'd ever seen. It had a two car driveway that was right off the sidewalk. The garage housed a remarkable secret.
The previous owner had a pit dug into the floor!
In the days before lifts were common in garages and gas stations, a mechanic's "grease pit" was the alternative. It was deep enough for the mechanic to stand straight up and access the undercarriage of a car. It had to be long enough for the mechanic to be able to climb out of the pit once the car was on top. If not one mechanic got in first before the other drove the car into place. He had to wait under there for the car to be moved off to exit!
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| Not a bad idea. |
These pits were primarily used for oil changes and grease jobs. Back in the day cars had to have the oil changed and the fittings greased every thousand or so miles. This was the most common job done at service stations and garages. Also coolant had to drained and refilled with anti freeze every season. Starter motors, transmission and differential plugs, as well as suspension components could be examined from underneath. There was a bit of planning required before you went to work with a shovel. There could be a problem with ground water drainage in some areas.
Most quick change oil service centers still use these pits. They are more like a basement level floor with the service floor built over the top. Access is by a stairway. This is the safest manner to work under a car and it also allows the customer to remain in the vehicle while the service is performed.
This was a rental house and we only lived there for a year. I think that my Dad may have changed the oil once using the pit. I remember that it had the heavy smell of old grease and dirt. Like the wrecking yards that I had visited with my Dad as a kid. ( Boy, does that scent bring back memories!) It was covered by heavy wooden planks. He never parked the cars in the garage and we didn't use it for storage. There was a very serious rat infestation in that neighborhood, and my brother and I were somewhat afraid to go into this garage by ourselves.
The next house my parents bought was an old house that had an equally old wood frame single car garage built alongside of it. It formed a narrow walkway to the side yard of the house. It also had the clamshell arrangement, with a single driveway in front. This garage also never held a car though it was used for storage. My Dad parked his car in the driveway. All sorts of automotive related activities took place in the driveway, washing, waxing, polishing.
Thinking back, some serious auto repair took place there! My Dad straightened out his wrecked '64 Pontiac wagon, and even painted it out there. We pulled the engine out of his '63 Lincoln and tore it down to have rebuilt. I even spilled a couple of gallons of ATF while changing out the front transmission seal on my '64 Cadillac convertible. I wasn't as neat as my Dad.
All of this took place in the clear view of our neighbors. I didn't even think about that at the time. We worked pretty neatly. The only thing that was noticeable was that the front end of the car was jacked up.We opened up the garage doors and kept the tools; rented cherry picker, and recently removed engine in the garage itself.
There was a large 10'x15' storage shed in the back yard when we moved in. My brother and I kept our motorcycles back there. We had a ramp set up and we'd push /ride them alongside the house to the front. That arrangement lasted for several years. Until the bikes got too big and heavy.
The shed came in handy though. That's where I worked on my motorcycles. I assembled my 305 Honda chopper, molded the frame of my Kawasaki 650, pulled the barrels on my Kawasaki Mach Three, and assembled the Honda 750 I bought in parts from my brother.
One good thing about motorcycles is that they don't take up as much room to work on or to store.
The last house that I lived with my parents had a pretty ideal set up.
It was located on a cul de sac and had a two car garage at the end of a long driveway. Alongside the driveway was enough space to park a car, that didn't block access to the garage opening. In fact there was a fence and gate that allowed a car to be driven into the back side yard. This property could have had an additional garage or shop built in the back of the yard. It could have been a car, boat or RV's guy's dream set up.
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| Yes that is me, almost forty five years ago! That's my folk's driveway on my right. Visible is my brother's '73 Camaro and a '51 Lincoln up by the fence. |
The driveway length could accommodate at least three cars Any work done in front of the garage would be hidden from the view of our neighbors. Besides holding two cars the garage had a enough extra depth for a workbench, storage shelves, and a cabinet against the back wall.
I did a lot of work in that driveway. I pulled the heads on my '57 Cadillac, and rebuilt my '70 Sportster chopper in that garage. My folks were always pretty cool about my activities in the driveway and garage. I always remember that when my Son needs to use my garage and driveway to do a bit of work on his vehicles.
When the opportunity to buy my Parent's house came up I'd already bought my current house, and I'd been living there for twenty years. But it could have been a car guy's garage-mahal.
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