05-12-2014, 11:50 AM
(05-12-2014, 11:40 AM)Pterodactyl_imp Wrote: You must be talking about my Dad. He had an International log truck similar to your Louisiana neighbours. Axe, crosscut saw, a circular saw driven off the PTO, stamina, toughness and a disregard of personal danger were the tools required. Big men. One of my Dad's "offsiders" (the other end of the crosscut) was a man who is now regarded as one of Australia's great authors. He wrote the novel Capricornia, which was made, not very successfully, into a movie. He liked the the bush and the real people who toiled there. Anyway that is another story.
There is one place that the bush mechanic still flourishes. Believe it or not it's India and other countries of the sub-continent. You want something fabricated and you get one of those head waggles and the mechanic wallah goes about working miracles.
Cheers
That is interesting, you never know where you will meet someone like that, (the author). Otherwise, yep, sounds just like old Pete, everything you said, big, tough, and always had a non filter Camel stogie hanging from the lip. Not sure any of them read or wrote nearly well enough to author a book, though,
.Most of that mechanical ingenuity undoubtedly comes from the absolute necessity people in the bush, jungles of India, or swamps of Louisiana, have to make things work in order to survive. You never know what you can be capable of when your "arse" is on the line.
Cheers