Mister Fix-It

Our father was a machine shop foreman. He was a great machinist and mechanic and could fix almost anything. I have lots of memories of Dad working on various appliances around the house. He was especially good at fixing the clothes washer and dryer and I often sat next to him handing him tools as he worked. He worked a lot of hours at his job and often needed to stay well into the second shift to make sure things were going well. Many times when he was finally home he would spend an hour on the phone talking the night shift foreman through some tricky problem at the shop. So Dad didn't always have a lot of time in the evenings and spent a lot of it fixing something around the house. Of course we had an old house with six kids running around and a couple of elderly people living there too. 

When I turned 16 I started working at his machine shop where I was a helper. He also took me over to Sears and bought me a toolbox and set of tools. I still have that toolbox. He wanted me to learn how to fix things too. Later I would be a machinist in the Navy working in the engine room but early on I was his helper around the house when he was fixing something. He was our Mister Fix-It.

The only thing we wouldn't touch was the television set. When something went wrong with it which seemed to be fairly often even after we got that first color TV around 1966. He had to call the TV repairman. We called that guy Mister Fix-It. He had a TV repair shop on Germantown Avenue a couple blocks away and he made house calls with his big toolbox that was mostly full of glass tubes. His special talent was knowing which tube to replace in our television.

It was ironic that we called someone else Mister Fix-It when it was Dad fixing everything around the house... except the TV. Now for us that was probably the most important thing in the house that needed fixing right away and we couldn't wait for Dad to come home from work. Mom had to call Mister Fix-It right away. For all us kids having the washer break or ever the refrigerator stop working was no where near a disaster as having the television not working when we got home from school which is probably why Mister Fix-It was so important and memorable to us. I can still remember that guy with his toolbox open on our living room floor while we anxiously waited for him to do his thing which mostly was putting that right tube into the right spot inside the TV.