Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
Growing up in the 50s, I remember that when something broke down, you took it to a repairman. Sometimes the repairman would come out to your house to fix things.
I remember the TV repairman would come out, pull your TV away from the wall, take off the back panel of the TV, and start testing all the tubes until he found the one that was bad. He would put a new tube in its place, put everything back together, slide the TV back to the wall and everything was fine.
For those who were savvy enough, you could pull the tubes yourself and take them to the hardware store and run them across a tester to see if they were bad. You could buy a new tube and take it home and fix the TV yourself. There was no such thing as a microchip back then. There were many people that shared this skill, we called them all repairmen or handymen.
I remember another time when our toaster went kaputt, my dad took me with him to a handyman who had a small workshop in his backyard. It was cluttered with tools and parts to fix just about anything. There was barely any room in that old shack to move around, but he knew where everything was.
I remember it was a hot summer day, and air conditioning was a luxury not many common folk had. I can clearly visualize the sweat rolling down his forehead and dripping off the tip of his nose. The old guy knew what he was doing and fixed the toaster up as good as new.
Back then, appliances were repaired when they weren’t working right. Nowadays, if something stops working, you just replace it. I can remember handymen from that era who drove around in their old panel truck filled with tools and parts, just like what that old guy had in his shed. They would come to your house and fix whatever needed fixing. Do they still exist?
I used to have a brother-in-law who had that talent. Monte could fix anything. The funny thing about him was that there were usually a few parts left over when he was done. He could make anything work again, but if it wasn’t essential to make it work, it stayed on the bench.
I remember a bracket that was left over from getting a new engine part put in my Oldsmobile. It never went back into the car, and I never seemed to need it, but it must have had a purpose. He wasn’t highly trained in repairing things, but had a God-given talent to fix anything. I miss him.
Modern technology has put these kinds of guys out of business. There are plenty of things around the house that could still be worthy of the talents of these fix-it guys, but is it enough to qualify as a business in today’s world?
There may be repairmen still out there but how do you find someone like that? Typically, you “know a guy,” and you give him a call. I need to find one and make him my best friend. I’m not looking for someone who will fix stuff for free; I am more than glad to pay for such services. In the meantime, I’ll just have to make do.
As I write this story, I got word that a giant in the Studebaker world has passed away. Herman Thoms co-owned Studebakers West in California with his brother. They recently closed the business as they were both getting too old to carry on. They were “the” place to go if you needed a Studebaker part or needed to know how to fix something.
They were well known, and Herm was a walking, talking encyclopedia about almost everything Studebaker. It’s a huge loss when people like Herm pass away. Their vast knowledge dies with them. Snippets can be found in the many responses he wrote for the Studebaker Co-Operator advice columns in the Studebaker Drivers Club magazine, but the ability to call him and ask him a question is now a thing of the past. I attached a picture of Herm in the messy world of his workspace, and it is a perfect visual of the workshop I mentioned in the second paragraph. I would be willing to bet that he knew exactly where everything was. Times have changed, and these handyman types are becoming extinct.
