When I was a kid, people had mechanics.
The mechanics were important.
The mechanics were a regular part of life.
You maintained a car.
Now it’s a little different.
You don’t really need to do anything to a car — change some fluids, scheduled maintenance, and if you get into a minor car accident or worse, then the insurance company totals it out and you get a new car.
Most of that schedule gets ignored by most of the people.
A car was a different thing once upon a time.
If you hit someone, you had a mechanic pound out the dent.
Today you send the whole pile of plastic to the dump if you back into a post too hard.
No matter what Klaus Schwab says, the old hunks of metal that used to be American cars — that could keep being repaired — are infinitely more environmentally friendly than the objects we drive today.
A very small part of my childhood was spent in Ted Haiser's garage, but it has outsized memories for me because it was such a fascinating place. I believe Ted Haiser, long since passed, will live in my memory and the memory of others, long after anyone has forgotten a Klaus Schwab. That’s just what happens to men like Ted Haiser.
His last name is pronounce Hay-sure by the way. They were polacks, I think. You could say that in Chicago. Like you could say other people were blacks and other people were talians or gypsies or Germans (even if no one in the family had been to Germany in like 150 years) or Irish, Mexicans too (even if they weren't actually Mexican), some people were hillbillies and sometimes there were even jews, but they lived mostly on the North Side by that time. It wasn’t too bad to say those things about each other.
Ted Haiser, or Mr Haiser, as he was to be respectfully referred to by me, had a garage and a pit in his garage. A pit for getting down under the car.
When things had to happen to the car, we’d stop by and sit for a while.
Not all day or anything, but for a while.
All kinds of people came through asking about all kinds of things about cars and always sitting for a while.
This was what Chicago was like in the 1980s.
It was a place where you’d sit in your mechanic's garage and chew the fat for a while.
You didn’t have to hurry home to watch your favorite Rumble video.
You weren’t an insurance liability waiting to happen in the garage.
People would be there working on their cars with Ted or learning from him.
He had the tools and the knowhow.
Always a revolving cast of characters in that place, which was just big enough for two cars but usually just had one inside it.
If you sat around long enough someone would tell you to pass him a thing you never saw before in your whole life it looked so strange.
These were how American cars were built before assembly line efficiency was the only thing that mattered.
I’m all for efficiency. I’m especially for efficiency leveraged in moderation against other values, instead of being treated like the Almighty.
Ted Haiser smelled of cigarettes.
He’d send me into the house to say hi to his wife.
Or to grab him a beer.
The men would stay outside and do their thing.
Sometimes I'd sit in the kitchen for a few minutes and the wife would ask me questions.
While I was still under ten or so, if got too close to Ted Haiser he had a gag he’d pull on me if I looked like I wasn't paying attention.
He was real strong still and not too old yet but the dentist gave him dentures already.
And he’d do this thing where he pretended to turn into a monster and his teeth would slip around and his jagged real teeth would show from behind the dentures, then he’d grab you and pretend to eat your ear or neck or something.
It was real scary when it happened to you.
And it was real funny if you were older and watching it.
There were things to sit on out there in the garage.
I don’t remember what.
An old couch from the house probably.
But it was also likely a rotating cast of items, just like the people who came through.
They were things that were old and too comfortable to throw away, but no one’s wife would tolerate it in the house anymore.
Mr. Haiser would work his railroad job at night and then during the day he would get some sleep and get out to the garage, his own garage, where there were always a few cars ready for him and someone was always coming by asking Shirley, or Mrs. Haiser as I was always told to call her, if Ted was up yet — cuz that guy knew how to burn the candle at both ends.
The rail lines passed right by his house.
When it was time to go to work, he’d turn on his walkie talkie, see who was nearby on a train, then hop a freight train to work and hop one back after his shift.
This was what a garage was like.
This is what it was like growing up in Chicagoland.
Chicago went soft at least a generation later than the other, softer cities, but in some ways two or three generations later.
My grandpa was just a kid when Carl Sandberg wrote this about Chicago around 1910 or so:
--
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling
laughter of Youth, half-naked,
sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and Freight
Handler to the Nation.
--
And those lines, where true still even after my grandpa had died.
Lot of places changed a lot quicker than that.
Not Chicago so much, at least not in that way.
You didn’t wear your dress shirt when you came to the garage, you’d wear your undershirt down in the pit and if it was a Chicago summer, and you worked a long time in the pit, you’d probably be with no shirt.
That’s what Chicago was like.
Chicago was like Ted Haiser's garage. People sat around for a while.
People talked.
People stopped by and then left.
You had the frumporch, frunchroom, kitchen, and gratch. Not everyone came in everywhere. People knew where they belonged and when.
Life had boundaries and it was okay.
You didn’t call Mr Haiser, Ted. You didn’t call Mrs. Haiser, Shirley. You didn’t call your Dad by his first name, and it was okay.
And when you were in the right place, you could sit back and relax, knowing you were where you were supposed to be, knowing you could be yourself in the place you were supposed to be.
We had our places.
I can’t replicate Chicago of the 1980s for you today, but I can invite you into The Garage. Join me there. Everyone is welcome.
Allan Stevo
It was interesting to read of your Chicago experience in the 1980's. Mine was very similar in the 1950's but of course I am a girl and was taught that cars were for boys only. I didn't mind. I liked that I was a girl. All I wanted was to get married and have babies. Today we have an auto mechanic that will come to our home, give us 30% off for being senior citizens and more off for paying cash. He knows the cars of today and can fix anything mechanical. I notice that there are a lot of cars on the road with dents and such. People can live with that these days. We don't go for the new cars. Our newest is a 2013 Chevy Spark with little power but great on gas mileage. It is everything I wanted in a car: it's red, has 4 doors and is very short in length. The other day at the grocery store, I parked next to an extended cab truck. My car was less than half of the length of that truck. I just smiled as I got in my cute little Chevy Spark and drove away.