When my husband, a heavy duty Detroit Diesel specialist, injured his back on the job and it was obvious following surgery that the local repair shops were reluctant to hire a man they felt would have limited physical ability to maintain his job, my husband subsequently decided to open his own repair shop. Through his first years as a mechanic working for various repair shops in our local area, he had developed a positive reputation as a Detroit Diesel specialist with the trucking public. A number of previous customers were willing to bring their engines to him for repairs, and for eighteen years we maintained a shop on our rural property, gaining customers through word of mouth. We worked on eighteen wheelers, converted buses, and the engines in various logging equipment. I can’t say that it was easy, but we made our living for those eighteen years. We were summoned to do repairs or diagnose engine problems across the country, not just California. We worked on equipment for customers who sent their engines to us for repairs from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii, and received calls to diagnose engine problems from across the United States as well as Australia
As my husband’s mechanic’s helper, I turned wrenches alongside him for those eighteen years, in coveralls, getting just as greasy and dirty as he did. He jokes to this day that the only time he saw me complain about my lot as his helper was when I got my long hair caught in the creeper wheels. Over those years as a result of the painful experience, I learned to keep my hair surrounded by a scarf when it wasn’t cut short. To this day I chuckle about it right along with him at the spectacle I must have made.
To a great degree a large amount of our customers during those years were owner operators of logging trucks and numerous logging firms. In the process of making a living we repaired engines on logging equipment that were both large and small, from huge yarders to smaller equipment. We often spent days out in the field, working in dense woods, miles from paved highways and roads, making needed repairs, fixing everything from replacing injectors to complete engine overhauls.
During the times my assistance wasn’t required as my husband’s helper, I often sat in our pickup truck writing in spiral binders I’d brought along in order to quell my desire to write as well as to combat periods of boredom. I wrote my novel In the Path of the Dragon, a novel about an arsonist’s initiated destruction in a California wildfire, while sitting in our truck surrounded by the peacefulness of the northern California forests. I also started numerous of my other twenty-one self published works during those hours when my help wasn’t required. I often sketched as well, while waiting to be summoned to help.
A writer tends to find times to write, whether they are in an airport lobby waiting for a flight, sitting in their car while waiting for their school children to be released from class, or in a park surrounded by strangers and pigeons. Some of us are spurred to rise in the wee small hours in order to quell the call of restless characters that refuse to allow us to sleep as they maraud through our dreams. And then there are the harrowing times of writer’s block. Needless to say, sometimes it isn’t easy to craft our thoughts into words of print!
