AUTOMOTIVE COLLISION REPAIR JOBS

2007 spring is starting. Now we only have short dash til summer vacation holidays and then the rest is all holiday - repeated almost every month and we go into the next year.

Are we coming out of wars. Are we coming out of all the dems and republican stuff. I don't know yet. But here is something we are still going to pay for, right here, all the time.

It's un-updated infras of the United States. These days I still read much about tanking housing markets and mortgage problems and also, estate taxes hike and so on. Say in that last estate boom cycle, the house value went up like 30 to 50% even - in this region, the bottom level kind, and each house is like maybe 50,000 dollar worth at most originally. (It's all very shacky area. So so concrete foundations on swamps with plywood walls without any insulations in walls or roof. Built around 50s.)

But then price can go double - in the time of 2000 - til mid 2006.

Problem is that that money is not reflected in any of the substantial parts of this house, or all those houses increased value in that time. It's basically, houses built before oil shocks - (probably with federal government issued mortgages - post war thing.) - without any consideration about

How long this should last
How much, how frequent repairs and replacements have to be done?
What about energy cost

etc.

It's basically something needs real overhaul. Probably something like even 10,000 dollars would do much. Insualting from the roof, walls. Checking windows. (Some professionals would say 'Just raze it and it's cheap and eco-friendly to build new one.' I see that calculation but that's for another time.)

But then banks and governments run this hike thing first. You don't believe people would put more money on buying rusting, breaking down old cars. But it is a house, so, no matter how many 'things' are going wrong or unupdated - price just went double for this one, almost.

But nothing is done to this house past 50 years. And if you put the price double, the people who bought this house won't have money to fix it up.

Then the landlord who bought this house has no money left for fixing anything - and then he faces this softmarket in which he probably even cannot sell out without making much loss. It was all in all, like a bad, un-thought-out gamble.

And with the current gas and oil price - globally - soaring high, properly heating this house all winter long cost say nearly 1,000 dollars. (If you use gas. Coal based electricity is much cheaper and that was our choice.)

Money goes to bank, county (they raise tax of course), and utility.

And house gets no updates.

I know there is a line in somewhere in the middle class America, for some this is something just makes them argue back that many of their friends are actually putting money in their houses and doing green or eco repairs.

But there is a lower part of that line. And Americans lower than that line cannot afford to even pay say 30 or 50 dollars to put a decent curtain on their single pane windows, or replace broken water tap wheel.

Why? Pay hasn't rised for those groups. Health cost rose. Mortgage rose or rent rose. Utilities are up.

Just last week in one night, Charlie Rose had two guests, showing up and talking of this kinda problem is going to come around for us harder - in coming years.

[the connection part is finally broken, and seems 80% of the water just leak from there. Shelter Science: You probably cannot replace those metal parts- on the tap wheel side or hose side - either is broken - but it'd take too much. They aren't made to be so modular. One solution is finding' glue' - to stuff the gap or crack or what at that connection. But I am suspicious that we have such magic glue, which withstands summer's heat and winter's long cold - without cracking and creating further messy situation when that glue gives out.]

[I don't understand why American houses really don't have 'section' for water taps and sinks and spaces - with roof for 'outside, yard work/activity' stuff. If they got acres of lot, then you'd have machineries and tools and actitivites. Then you need place to put them, you need place to shelf them and wash them and so on.

But by so far, in this region - comes with very long and cold winter - I always find 'outdoor tap' hanging on the wall, and really out of shapes. Why not build some area with some walls and roof - and put these water and sink stuff there? > I should send question to craigslist.]

When I was growing up, we had a Pinto. It was the main family car. A hatchback. Blue. That car needed routine work. Dad was always tinkering under the hood to keep it going.

We drove out to Colorado (over the mountains!) more than once in that car. I learned how to repair an exhaust pipe with a tin can from that car.

Furthermore, regarding the exhaust system, I learned that if the car blows the muffler off in the rain at night in Rapid City, SD, it is very loud and Dad will be very angry about it.

I got kicked out of the Pinto, along with my sister (4 years older than myself) on a very desolate stretch of county highway in South Dakota. The sun was setting and my Dad drove off. A long way off. We were quiet in the back after that.

Our Pinto also had a massive rust problem with the under carriage. It was so bad that the passenger seat (while I was in it) after hitting a crater in the road (it was beyond pot hole phase) listed to the right to the point where the head rest was resting on the passenger door window and I could see the road going by under the car (Dad fixed it later that week).

Once, when my Mom was driving my sister and I from something, we were caught in a torrential downpour and the underside of the engine got wet. The car coughed, died, and rolled to a stop along the interstate just under an overpass, which allowed the engine to dry out and us to get on our way after about 20 minutes.

But my favorite Pinto story is this: My Dad spent a summer working in Fort Payne, Alabama. Fireworks were legal there and not in Minnesota. (Here is a moment where you realize that times have changed...) Dad brought a grocery sack of fireworks home with him one weekend... ON THE PLANE! So, we decided to try one of these blackpowder devices in the drive way. It was called a "Saturn Missile" and was 25 plastic red tubes that whistled and took off from a box (arranged in a 5x5 grid) like bottle rockets. We lit the Saturn Missiles, stepped back, not having any idea what they would do other than "issue a loud report and emit a shower of sparks", and off they went! However, the third rocket to go got stuck and blew up in the holder, which tipped over from the explosion. Now, instead of pointing towards the sky, the Saturn Missile was on its side and pointed at the gas tank of the Pinto! Five or six more of the shots went off, skittered under the car, bounded, danced, exploded, and rattled under the fender of the Pinto before Dad could get the box pointed towards the sky again. Ah, good times!

Taken by CoryQ.