Dave Died Thursday

Dave was a metal man, the best welder/machinist/inventor/mechanic I knew.  It was diabetes that did him in, something he was diagnosed with when he and I were both in our twenties.

We met in shop class sophomore year.  We were both in high school but in different meanings of the word.  I was in high school in the sense of being in school and studying; Dave was in high school in the sense of being in the building rather than being someplace else.  Shop class was where Dave excelled; he sat in the back of other classes, polite, quiet, but never really involved.

He stopped coming to school during senior year, until his grandmother spotted him in town while he should have been in school.  Chastised by his grandmother, he came back to school and ultimately graduated, though a half-year after the rest of his class.

Dave was a shop and garage rat. He'd hang out in any machinist shop or auto garage that'd let him in the door.  Sooner or later the owner or foreman would pay him some small change to sweep the floor or run for parts.  Whatever he was asked to do he did to a ridiculous high standard.  Sweep the floor?  It would be immaculate when he finished, with loose items organized and stacked, and the bathrooms made spotlessly clean.  Run for parts?  He'd come back with the parts truck cleaner than when he left The guy knew how to work.

Someone taught him how to weld.  He became a welding machine, learning all types of welding.  His beads were perfect, the splatters were gone.  He was among the first to learn how to weld aluminum.  He bought some used equipment and began welding things for customers in his parent's garage.  After a year of complaints form neighbors, Dave's dad paid the first three months rent on a small shop building and Dave moved there.  He learned how to stitch metal so he became the local go-to guy for repairing broken metal castings, engine blocks, big equipment, etc.  He saved a couple of ruined engine blocks for me, back when I was an woefully under financed drag racer.

Dave never owned a new car or truck.  He'd buy some beater, tear it completely down and rebuild it to his satisfaction.  He'd re-engineer parts and assemblies that he though were originally inferior.  His cars and trucks weren't fancy, but zow, were they solid.  Hot rod builders started bringing him out-of-true frame rails and he rigged up a perfectly flat frame table and chain system to get them exactly perfect.  He bought a metal lather along the way, learned how to use it, and could custom make parts out of raw stock.

He was quiet, never swore, never drank and watched his health.  Diabetes, you know.  These are very unusual for guys who worked in shops.  And he never married.  No reason why, but he just didn't get around to it. Working long hours were his love life.

He bought a large building sometime in his 40s and remodeled it into a beautiful shop.  He found young guys who had no sense of direction in their lives - mutts, he called them, and taught them skills.  Some got it, others didn't.  He required that they show up each morning clean, groomed, sober and ready to listen and learn and work hard. He saved a few kids who were headed in the wrong direction; some others went the wrong way.  It was always a disappointment that he couldn't fix some kids like he could always fix something made of metal.

The biggest surprise I had was one afternoon when he said "come on over for pizza".  Not to the shop, but to his house.  No one had been in Dave's house, ever.  I expected that it would be typical bachelor's home - decent, but disorganized and messy.  What a shock it was to enter and find a carefully decorated, early American style interior.  Antiques everywhere, stuff he had picked up at auctions and other places.  And books, stacks and shelves of books.  Some were technical, but many other were about the Civil War.  He could talk about the Civil War for hours.

This happened about seven years ago.  he had invited me to his home to talk about what to do with his shop and business.  The meter was ticking, the diabetes was taking it's toll, and what he wanted was a succession plan of some type.  It was a long talk - it became ongoing for more than a year.  We had a mutual friend (actually the son of a friend) who was an engineer and didn't want to work in an office.  He had been building engines and transmissions and things for some racers, and was a pretty decent mechanic.  Short story - Dave agreed to "hire" him to learn how to manage the business, while in reality Dave made him a minor partner with a buy-in each year until he owned the business.

Then Dave died last Thursday.  Heart failure, a risk diabetics have.  By the time he died, he was losing the use of his hands an feet a bit, his vision had become poor, and his strength was waning.  It was time for his life to end; he knew it; and faced it with no sense of anger or disappointment.  We talked about it a few times, and he said that he was happy because he had done in life the things that were important to him: fixing things and fixing young men when he could.  He had no regrets.

He had no regrets.  We should all be so lucky to reach our end in that frame of mind.

RIP, Dave.