Jaci Dawn

This is the old engine block. Now, I’m going out on a limb here, because I only think this is an engine block. It’s something to do with an engine, but it may or may not actually be the engine block. I am assuming it is. I really have no idea, even though my husband has talked non-stop engine parts for two years, even though my big brother once made me reach into a five gallon bucket of black oily greasy stuff to pick out a gear for an engine (I think it was first gear, but I have no idea to this day what it was, some circular thing with cogs), even though my son has had his head under the hood of a car since he was sixteen, and even though my father spent much of his time hunched over an engine or underneath a car asking me to hand him the 3/4″socket (“No, Goddammit, the socket! 3/4″! Not the damn wrench!”).

Marissa Tomei, I am not. Therefore, captioning the following photos is a bit of a stretch and I am putting this disclaimer out: I don’t know what the hell it is, I only know it goes into a 1971 Volkswagen bus, and it makes the bus run.

This is a fan. Damn, I am good. I can handle simple mechanical things.

This is the tin framework stuff-y that is being replaced.

More tin stuff that is being replaced.

OH! LOOK! Teeny-weeny tiny ants on the tin that is being replaced. They’re the little yellow-orangey bumps. I couldn’t get a better shot of them.

Um. He told me what these are. (I just yelled downstairs: “What are those long, grey things?”) Heat exchangers! They may or may not need to be replaced. He’s not at that stage yet. (See how well he knows me? He knew what I was asking.)

You don’t have to be a mechanic to appreciate how beautiful this is. I know the orange thing is the distributor cap, and the coil of wire on the bottom right is the thermostat (or where the thermostat goes).

This goes on top of the other part, and it has the flaps that control the airflow to the engine. Apparently, a lot of people who rebuild VW bus engines like to leave the flaps off, but my husband is not only a perfectionist, but he is a purist. And about that perfectionism: this is the new tin part that replaces some of that old tin part (where the ants are now living). Don went out and bought heat resistant, high gloss, black spray paint. He’s been a mechanic for years (career, not backyard garage) and spray painting parts is an art to him. Not a speck of dust or dribble.

The cast offs. I don’t think he will let me keep them in case I learn to weld and I decide to create a sculpture out of them. I’m pretty certain he’s going to recycle these beautiful pieces of potential artwork before I get my hands on them.

I rest my case.