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Parts

by Eva Murray

It has become stylish to write and publish articles educating the rest of us on how to simplify our lives, because we are all supposedly burdened with an existence so annoyingly complex that we need a list of 12 tips on how to clean out under the sink, or ten ways to create more elbow-room in our cubicle. We think we long for the simpler days of yester-year, because we have the (likely misguided but appealingly romantic) notion that back in the days of salt cod and itchy socks, when most people owned two sets of clothing and a letter took a month to deliver, we lived at peace with our surroundings and slept better at night. Surely the pre-cell phone folks who spent their days churning butter and shoeing oxen reveled in their peace and quiet, thought deep thoughts, and suffered no ulcers.

Actually, that is mostly a load of baloney, historically speaking, but we cling to our treasured images of simplicity and have learned to associate a calm, restorative environment with cleared-off surfaces, clean white walls, order, neatness, and a certain household minimalism. We imagine relaxing summer cottages as smelling of fresh paint and by definition nearly devoid of contents. (This is a blatant advertising gimmick and one ought not be hoodwinked.) A few of the more well-to-do hire consultants to help them “simplify,” meaning have a yard sale for goodness sake and get rid of most of this crap. We have subscribed to this business of “If you haven’t used it in a year, throw it out,” and take as gospel that our problem is “clutter,” meaning useless junk, and that if we could only break off from being borderline hoarders and jettison most of our possessions, we’d reap an immediate psychological benefit.

The assumption is that our “clutter” is basically that old bottle-cap collection, a beer stein that says “Welcome to Sheboygan,” and disco boots from junior high school. That’s all wrong. That’s not how it is. That’s not what we’ve been saving all these years. Those people on the reality-TV shows and in all those housekeeping articles who save all manner of truly useless stuff—they aren’t us.

No. We save parts.

…and there is a big honkin’ difference between “clutter” and “parts.”

If you happen to live in an isolated community—say, a remote offshore island, just for the sake of argument—you cannot simply hop in the ol’ SUV and drive to the Big Box Store every time something breaks. No, a good back-country (or island) homeowner or tradesman has a bit of MacGyver in him, or her, and is skilled at making do with what’s on hand. Readiness at emergency repairs using scavenged parts is an outlet for creativity, a real art in some cases, and a respected indicator of talent and intelligence. It also demonstrates one of the more highly-praised traits in Maine, that being cheapness. We say, “There must be something around here we can use to fix this.” We say, “I think I have something that might fit this out in the shop, if I can find it.” We say, “I knew I had the right size fitting somewhere.” We do not say, “Let’s send all this old junk to the dump.”

There is a lot to be said for that old line about “baling twine and hay wire,” although neither of those items is commonly found on a fishing island. Perhaps “pot warp and hog rings.”

By the way, the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th edition, explains this business of “haywire” with an interesting bit of trivia:

Word History: Why should wire used in baling hay be a metaphor for something that is not functioning properly?...From the written record, it appears the use originated among North American loggers around 1900, who often used haywire to make repairs. These repairs were often considered shoddy or unreliable, and haywire developed the general sense “makeshift, inefficient,” from which come the extended senses “not functioning properly” and “crazy.”

Well then.

Whether you are a North American logger or anybody else, you will need to occasionally repair things around the premises if you are at all resourceful, and that requires parts, and in the absence of a hardware store or any sort of retail option at all, you’ll need to avail yourself of your own or somebody else’s collection of…junk. I mean parts.

Everybody has a kitchen junk drawer, but some of us go farther. Some especially inspired among the Scrap Heap Engineers take it out of the realm of hobby and go professional. As it happens, I live in a subculture of parts. I am surrounded. My yard contains several trucks filled with parts, we are taxed for more than one building filled with parts, and just the stuff that comes out of the pockets each evening to be piled up on the kitchen table would start a halfway decent hardware store. In my community, when people experience an equipment failure, they usually bring the defunct submersible pump, fish finder, telephone or whatever to my house, either to be repaired or because they think my husband needs it (for parts, of course). I am mean and strict; I will say “No, thanks” except if the thing’s got an obviously good meter movement or decent brass fittings. My husband will say “No thanks” only if the thing’s obviously been smashed, sunk, and burned to the waterline – twice.

However, to be fair, again and again he has been able to rescue somebody whose water pump has failed on a Sunday because we have pieces of water pump underfoot. If he listened to the advice of those who preach getting rid of stuff, he’d have nothing with which to get the water going on the holiday weekend or in the storm, when ordering stuff from the mainland means waiting three days. Accepting the wisdom of “If you haven’t used it in a year, throw it out” would have resulted in many an unrepaired item over the years, fewer happy neighbors, and fewer opportunities for the expression of genius that is the improvisational repairman’s special magic. In the end—when you live far from anywhere—the mechanical packrat comes up smelling like a rose in the end. It’s always about coming up with the parts.