My Dad always had a love for the mechanical.  Is your washing machine, sewing machine or lawn mower broke?  

Get young Bob Cote over here,  He fixes things.  He would take things apart, figure out what was wrong, and  Bobs your Uncle… it was fixed.

He was a handy man.  He did many jobs before he found his calling.  He worked at one of the 3 or 4, wooden furniture shops in town before WWII.

For the war effort, he worked in a factory, making 5″ gun barrels for the Navy:  http://www.navweaps.com/  “(This was unquestionably the finest Dual Purpose gun of World War II. Originally designed to arm new destroyers being built in the 1930s, the 5″/38 (12.7 cm) wound up being used on nearly every major US warship built between 1934 and 1945 and was still being used on new construction as late as the 1960s.)”  (copied from navweaps.com)

Of course being the man he was, he saved the end cuts, (pieces left over, too small for use), took them home and made ash trays and book ends out of some.

After the war, he opened up Bobs Fix-it Shop.  He fixed what ever people needed.   Cars, now could get tires and gas and started to break down.

“Lets see what Bob can do?”   Right place right time, prosperity was raising her lovely head.  Cars, were his future.  Families, were getting 2nd cars, he was soon opening a garage,  still a Fix-it Shop, but a Filling Station also.

Bobs Fix-it Shop

He worked 12 to 18 hours a day.  Sundays, just six, no repairs, only sold fuel, after 6am Mass till noon.  We would take rides all over creation on Sunday afternoons, so no one could reach him for their emergency.

Christmas he was off, unless a snowstorm had come over night.  He would be out plowing, come home for breakfast, watch us open presents and spend however long it took to plow his garage yard and his customers driveways.

He was a work-aholic.   I started out that way….  didn’t stick…. lol.

If I had had, his ambition, I might have made something of my life.   Oh well.

Thats all for today.   I will try to keep them coming.