A Lass and Two Mechanics –OR- It’s Just Water Dear...

To begin with let me say right up front this story is true, and most likely it’s not the first time you’ve heard something similar.  But like all stories there’s more than one side, and the point of this post isn’t the first side, nor even the second, but actually the third side of the story I’d like to bring to focus: the third side that’s actually responsible for the story in the first place even though to seldom mentioned. 

Anyway, the story goes like this.  Once upon a not very long time ago a comely young woman was having trouble with her automobile, it was overheating, not a happy machine at all.  Aghast at the price a local shop was asking to engage with the problem she took a gamble on a friends’ advice and allowed a retired industrial mechanic to take a look.  He (correctly) diagnosed and changed out a defective thermostat.  Not a big job, not at all, a common inexpensive part and most generally no more than an hours work even just goofing around. Coolant flow restored her ride went back to being a happy machine.  The veteran checked a couple of more things, just to be certain, and satisfied her car would remain a happy machine sent them on their way.  He took lunch money and a thank you as his reward, it wasn’t much of a job.  Story told?  Not quite.

Now the young woman wasn’t having any problems with her car, but likely as a consequence of the time she spent watching the mechanic work (no doubt in a driveway somewhere, you know, where the customer isn’t banished from the work zone safely away from all that black magic under the  hood) she was much more aware of her machine.  One hot afternoon a few days later she parked her car and was horrified to notice liquid dripping onto the pavement beneath.  OH-MY-GOD!  Something is leaking!  Knowing the local shop she’d approached had wanted a good amount of money to even bring her car into their shop, and suddenly mistrusting the old industrial mechanic (after all, he’d worked in a factory, he didn’t have all the auto certification placards hanging over his bench like the guys in the professional shops had, maybe he just thought he knew what he was doing... it had looked terribly complicated under the hood) she took the car to a brand name corporate shop who agreed to do a diagnosis for free.

Two hours later it was grim news the burning rock shop manager brought her.  Several hoses on the back of the engine had been misconnected, the engine no doubt heavily damaged as a consequence, the repairs might run as high as a couple of thousand dollars.  Allowing for the age of the vehicle it might be cheaper to just install a new engine and be done with it.  

In point of fact the shop manager overplayed his hand, he misjudged how much money the lass had to work with, he misjudged how much she loved her old friend, how much she was willing to spend to keep it.  She didn’t take his bait, said she needed to investigate a bit and think about the situation.  After all, if it was time for a new engine then it was likely time for a new car and there was no sense in spending that kind of money on the old one.  Into the teeth of his dire warnings the inevitable failure would be sudden and likely leave her stranded by the side of the road, totally vulnerable to lord anything and everything, she got back in her car and left.

Where did she go?  Back across town with anger boiling in her heart to find the fellow who’d changed out a thermostat for her. If nothing else by God she was going to give him a good piece of her mind.  By the time she got there she’d worked up quite an eloquent and vitriolic case to present to him.  After all, it was his fault she’d have to give up her old friend that had been so faithful and get a new car she really couldn’t afford.

She found him sitting in a lawn chair beneath a shade tree beside his just mowed lawn, sipping a cold beer and admiring his work.  Into his driveway she pulled and out of her car she got.  Once glance down: still leaking more than ever.  She marched over to where he sat and began her fully rehearsed rant, intending to recount in detail the shop manager’s critique of his work and the consequences of his errors.  She pointed to the still visible drip under her car as proof, and was even further outraged to see a soft sad smile take possession of his face as he took another sip of his beer.

Before she could say another word he arose from his chair and walked to the side of her car, going to a knee to inspect the situation.  He leaned down, reached under the car to collect a generous sample of the liquid from the puddle on the pavement onto a calloused palm.  He pulled himself back to his feet, lifted his hand to his face, took a sniff, then held out his hand for her to inspect. 

What in the world was going on?  What he’d drained out into the bucket while he’d been working had been distinctly green, and it had a funny sweet smell to it, but this was crystal clear, no hint of color, no hint of odor.  Confusion took over her face. The old mechanic caught her eye, lifted his beer bottle and wiped the condensate from the cold glass onto a dry finger, held that hand out for her inspection.  Identical.

“It’s just water dear, and if it’s putting out that much condensate I’d say your air conditioner is working just fine, doing exactly what it’s supposed to.  What’s the problem sweetheart?”

The lass nearly collapsed into tears as the full scope of the situation crashed in on her, the injustice of the whole affair coming and going. What’s the problem?  She suddenly realized the problem, and her entire attitude changed in a heartbeat.

Do you see the problem here?  There is one, a big one, a very big problem.  As a matter of fact it is a bigger problem than anything having anything to do with automobiles, large as automobiles are in the modern world.  The problem is even larger than the outright fraudulent deception the shop manager attempted to perpetrate on the lass, cold and callous and dishonorable as that was.  It is more than a big problem, it is in fact a huge one.

The real problem here, the third side of the story, is the grotesque amount of ignorance in the population at large concerning the workings of the physical world.  In this day and age perhaps no more than one in ten have any idea how the world they live in actually works.  In many cases their ignorance is approaching total, they truly have no clue, no tiny fragment of a Rosetta stone from which to begin learning, and in their ignorance they are totally vulnerable to anything from the sort of fraud the shop manager attempted to outright superstition taking over their lives. 

Once upon a simpler time almost everyone had a decent understanding of the physical world, almost everyone worked with some part or portion of the physical as a consequence of earning a living.  They understood the difference between fact and opinion, between truth and belief.  Almost everyone knew someone who dealt directly with any given facet of the physical world, it wasn’t hard to find someone to teach such things.  In those days the education establishment made sure everyone was exposed to a little of the other things, the non-physical things: art and literature and philosophy, the matters of the mind.  Just so people would know such things existed and have some idea of what they were.

Of course the situation now is exactly reversed, our society and the technology that supports it have grown to the point the majority are never really exposed to the physical, their worlds’ revolve around an entirely different set of skills and demands.  If you grew up in the nine out of ten families where the physical is no part of how you earn your livelihood it really isn’t so very easy to find someone to teach, even if you’d like to learn, even if you’re willing to endure the subtle and entirely to common bias and bigotry found in the nine out of ten against the socially inferior troglodytes who do know. 

The problem lays squarely at the feet of the education establishment for failing to protect everyone from the potentials for fraud and abuse by providing a workable minimum of understanding of how things actually work, for failing to teach how to think about a situation in the physical world where the facts are the facts of science and belief, opinion, has no real power, to teach physical reality as a rational and understandable thing open to anyone and everyone. 

Of course education is the servant of the establishment, and the establishment has never had any problem creating and exploiting ignorance for its’ own power and profit, so perhaps education has been very firmly and very, very quietly instructed to leave the situation as is. 

Perhaps this might be a good place for the right Honorable Senator Elizabeth Warren, long time champion of consumer rights, to focus a bit of her attention and work to reverse this discrepancy in public education as an aid in putting down her long time adversary: fraud of the sort the burning rock manager attempted on the innocent girl trying her best to take care of her own.  To my thought that would be the American thing to do, work to fix the problem rather than treat the symptoms and live with the consequences.