Handiness is the best defence against irrelevance.
by Dan Needles ❧ illustration by Shelagh Armstrong-Hodgson
As I try to “age in place” these days, juggling a little bit of all the things I used to do, it strikes me that my chief function now is to fix things. I am still a writer, but a big part of my day is given over to repair, replacement and renovation, not just of my own possessions but anything that is dropped off at the gate. I also do quack veterinary work and some plumbing.
Repair shops still exist for the 15 internal combustion engines I maintain here on the farm, but they all have stiff minimum charges and need three weeks to get around to anything. If you need it fixed now, chances are so does everyone else. So, I am constantly thrown back on my own resources.
Each of us has that one thing we do well, but as the years go by, the need for that particular skill will likely diminish or even disappear completely. My great-grandfather was a successful hatter on Bond Street in downtown Toronto and travelled the world looking for exotic feathers to weave into his creations. But by 1920, women had lost interest in hats and his business closed. He spent his declining years keeping up with his young second wife’s determination to redecorate their house on St. George Street. By the time he died, he hadn’t thought about a hat for 20 years.
There are some skills that never go out of date. Detecting an electrical short in a machine, water witching, jump-starting a newborn lamb or pruning roses fall into that category. These are not highly paid skills, but they do command respect and often produce non-monetary returns like a rhubarb pie left on the doorstep. Vehicle maintenance has become a lost art for the younger generation. As the price of tire repair doubles and doubles again, my children, their cousins and friends bring all their minor problems here.
Last month I started out one morning to repair a broken chain on my manure spreader. But I was interrupted to install a replacement taillight on my niece’s little American compact car, for about one third of the cost she would have paid if she took it to the dealership. However, Amazon does not send any car part to you with an electrical connector that matches the one you have on the car. So there was a delay while we rewired that part. In the meantime, her car was joined by two other vehicles that needed their snows switched for summer tires. And an oil change if I could squeeze it in. A sheep required assistance with a difficult lambing. Around three in the afternoon my wife yelled from the front lawn that her lawn mower had a flat tire and what was I making for dinner?
“For Pete’s sake,” exclaimed my niece. “Let the poor old man have a $#&% nap!”
There are some jobs you just can’t get anyone to do anymore, like sewing up a chicken after it’s been in a fight. Fortunately, the law still allows you to go to the assistance of any animal in your care, without the supervision of a licensed practitioner. I had a hen that got scalped by her best friends one time. (Things get pretty tense after a long winter in a henhouse.) I did my best to put her back together, but I made the stitch above her left eye a bit tight. This gave her a permanently skeptical expression, like Norma Shearer. She lived for another two years, walking around the shop and glaring at me with that raised eyebrow, a constant reminder of my limited gifts as a surgeon, electrician, plumber or anything else.
All the experts agree the best defence against aging is to maintain a sense of purpose and stay useful.
Retirement is a dangerous game because it suggests you should give up doing what has been getting you out of bed in the morning for the last 40 years. Maybe you can’t keep doing that brain surgery you found so absorbing in your working career, but you have to find something else to keep the neuron pathways open and supple.
I recommend an online course in small motor repair. It will do more than anything else to keep you out of the nursing home.
Humorist and playwright Dan Needles lives on a small farm in Nottawa. His latest book is Finding Larkspur: A Return to Village Life (Douglas & McIntyre, 2023).
