Ken and Paula Covert
Session 1
March 27, 2026
Table of Contents
Birth and Early Years
Good morning, I am Ken Covert. This is my story.
I was born on September 27th, 1947, in Canton, Ohio, at Aultman Hospital. My dad’s name was Luther Archibald Covert; he always went by Arch or Slim. My mom’s maiden name was Irene Elizabeth Meyerholtz. Of course, I always knew her as Mom. She was born in Ohio. Dad was born in Pennsylvania but raised in California—Bakersfield, in fact. Both of them lived through the Depression on small farms. They met and married in Ohio.
Dad served in World War II in the Army Corps of Engineers. I spent a lot of time going through some of Dad’s keepsakes from World War II and learned a lot about the war from him. I also learned a lot about inflation. In fact, I saw some of the German money—thousand and ten-thousand Reichsmark bills—that he brought back with him. That’s for another time, anyway.
The Basement House
My memories of my childhood started back in what I considered a basement house. It amounted to nothing more than a basement and a stairway leading into it with a flat roof on top. It is hard to describe for most people who’ve never seen one. I finally found a picture of one that was located in California, of all places, and found an article explaining that they were apparently commonplace for World War II veterans. They would buy those kinds of structures, and as they found jobs, they then built the houses on top of that basement. They lived in that basement-type house until they could build the house on top of it and then slowly move into it, which is exactly what Dad did with ours.
I remember some of the life inside that basement—not a lot, but some. Of course, when you have that kind of basement dwelling, you have to have an outhouse because there wasn’t any bathroom in that basement. So, for most of my early life, I was dealing with an outhouse. I think it was probably the first grade before I had an inside bathroom, so outhouses were common for me. Cold weather there was not a lot of fun, but anyway.
Early Memories of Home
Coal-fired furnaces were common. I guess what I remember most is the sulfur smell in the air. Once you knew it was wintertime, you could smell the coal and the sulfur in the air.
An early remembrance was literally an ice refrigerator—a large block of ice which kept the milk and everything cold. I remember milk deliveries and actual milk trucks. I think that’s where we got the ice, from the milk truck, but I’m not positive.
As a kid, I had a heart murmur that lasted until I was about 11 or 12. I was also anemic, which didn’t help things. I didn’t know until I got older that the family couldn’t get insurance on me because I wasn’t expected to live to be 12 years old because of the murmur. That was what they thought at the time. Because I was anemic, I had to have cod liver oil every morning, which I detested. Even now, if I get fish that has even a hint of that fishy oil taste, I cannot eat it. It’s terrible. With every spoonful of cod liver oil, I got a hunk of orange or something to help kill that taste, but it was nasty, nasty, nasty.
Building Upward
I remember, I think, one of my sisters being born. I remember it was Mom or Dad carrying her down the steps into the basement house. I think that was my sister, Pat, who’s younger than me. Outside of that, I don’t remember where we slept inside that basement house. I just know that’s where we lived. That’s about all I remember of living down there.
I know that, slowly but surely, Dad built the house on top of that. My uncles and some neighbors helped him build it. He made the floor plan for it, apparently scratching it on a napkin or something. It took shape slowly but surely. I remember the first day that we moved up. I don’t even know if Dad knew that my mom was going to do it, but as soon as he had doors and windows on it, Mom moved all of us upstairs. I think it was a surprise when he got home from work that we were all relocated upstairs.
It was definitely not what it was when I grew up. Bedrooms moved around as he finished it. It was kind of like a half-floor; there were two bedrooms upstairs but no bathroom. We only had one bathroom, which was typical back then. All of us boys had the rooms upstairs, and everybody else was downstairs. One bathroom and seven kids made for a really interesting time in the morning, but that’s how it was.
I think we still had the outhouse for a long time, so the bathroom wasn’t a problem for the guys—you just went out to the outhouse. Showers were the problem. I remember, early on before there was a bathroom inside, taking baths in old wash tubs. People talk about the “old times” taking baths; I actually remember baths in a wash tub with common tub water. That was not unusual back then. I can flash back and sympathize with people who talk about that in the 1800s or early 1900s.
My wife, Paula, never had that experience. She always had a house with bathrooms and tubs, so she never had that experience. I think that’s why she doesn’t have those kinds of memories; everything was normal for her. For me, I had a lot of different things.
I don’t know if the furnace wasn’t hooked up yet, but I remember a large potbelly stove that heated the upstairs area. I remember my younger brother happened to step into this stove, and he burnt his right forearm really bad. Once he burnt himself, we made sure we stayed away from that. Eventually, we ended up getting away from coal and went to fuel oil. That was pretty cool. You didn’t smell that sulfur smell when you went outside. After that, life was pretty normal. That’s kind of my early life.
Memories of Ohio and Childhood Wonders
I guess I should talk about my early childhood memories. With seven kids in the family, I had three brothers; two are still alive, and one has passed. He died of a heart attack about 20 years after returning from the Vietnam War.
In the area of Ohio where we lived, there was a creek about a mile away called Nimishillen Creek in Stark County. It was a small creek that you could dam up with rocks, which were not uncommon since that area is a floodplain from the glacial period. You could dam it up with some of the rocks you found and make it deep enough to be about shoulder-deep. There was always a tree stump or part of a tree you could use as a diving board to dive in and swim. You could catch crayfish—or crawdads, whatever you want to call them—and you could fish there. We swam in it during the summer and, of course, in the Canton area, I’d ice skate on that creek in the winter. We skated on that thing for a couple of miles at times. It was our escape. It was a wooded area, so climbing trees and hunting for things was just our escape when we weren’t working in the garden.
Life on the Farm
We always had a garden during the summer. With seven kids, you always had a garden. I think for a while there, during my first few years, we did have a hog. I barely remember it; I think it only lasted a year. I have a bare memory of Dad having somebody come in to kill and slaughter it, and that was that. As a kid in that part of Ohio, we were outside 99 percent of the time. We really didn’t spend much time indoors.
Technology and Toys
TV-wise, it was hard to get much watch time. We had black-and-white TVs. I guess I was in elementary school before cartoons were very common. I think I was almost in junior high before we could afford a color TV. When I talk to my grandkids and they mention arcade-type games or anything like that, those were just nonexistent back then. We had board games, maybe, but if you wanted to make up a game, you did that with the toys you got at Christmas.
The only time you got toys was at Christmas and on your birthday—that was it. Otherwise, you didn’t have toys. You made toys out of things you found outside. I think one Christmas, my brothers and I got pedal cars, and that was a big deal.
The Magic of Christmas
Christmases were indescribable in the kind of joy and excitement that my brothers, sisters, and I had. It was a once-a-year lifetime experience, and my mom made sure it was just exceptional. I think it was common back then to remember Christmas as being so special. You looked forward to it, and when you see older movies about kids not being able to sleep, that’s pretty much the way it was. The day felt like it was two or three days long. You played and feasted on candy and whatever; it was just great. And those toys had to last—they had to last at least a year.
It was a lot of fun. I remember a lot of times crawling under the Christmas tree and looking up at the lights, just watching them. Again, without color TV, and being up in that part of the country where the snow turns kind of dirty and gray during the winter, everything was gray. Your tree was the only colorful thing you had, so it was just mesmerizing, especially for kids. That’s kind of the way childhood was for me; with my brothers, we were always getting into things.
Lessons in History and High School Hijinks
We never had a fake tree—never had a fake tree. I don’t know; I’ve never had to put up the trees myself, so I never had to deal with all the trouble that comes with it. But I was fascinated by some of the decorations Mom found. I know they ran up a debt every Christmas, and Dad always complained about it. For a good part of my life, Dad worked two jobs while Mom did the work at home; that’s what they agreed on. Mom didn’t get a job until all of us were in school, and even then, she only worked part-time. I think even at that point, expenses for kids’ clothes and stuff pretty much ate all of that up.
Basically, we didn’t see Dad a lot until the weekends. When he was home, he would read the paper, and we would all take turns sitting next to him because that’s how we won his attention. We had a lot of time to talk, and he would tell us stories about the military. I learned a lot about the military as I got older, and when I got into high school and college, we had good conversations.
Gold Standards and War Trophies
He wouldn’t hesitate to talk about things like the gold standard. I learned a lot about inflation and gold standards the hard way—that we should have never gone off the gold standard and seen the things inflation has caused. I’ve learned that printed money is a bad thing for an economy and a bad thing for working people.
Anyway, for the last couple of Christmases, we bought silver for our kids. For the last one, we bought three ounces each. At the time, it was forty dollars, and by Christmas time, it was almost a hundred dollars. It was a good example of what inflation does inside of six months—it more than doubled. Of course, it’s dropped back down again, but it’s still worth more than what we paid for it. It was a good lesson for my kids. It shows that precious metals matter when money has nothing backing it up.
When Dad got back from World War II, we had come a long way, but he showed us those thousand and ten-thousand Reichsmark bills. Dad said people would take wheelbarrows full of those just to buy a loaf of bread, and we’d say, “No way.” Now we understand why. We thought they were worth something, but no—they weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. It explained the bad things about war.
As for the first pistol I ever shot, he had a semi-automatic nine-millimeter that he brought back. I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with the thing; as a young kid, I was just terrible. But he also had an M1 Garand that he brought back. I think one of the grandkids has that now. I never shot that one, but he had a Winchester single-shot .22 that I own now. I used to shoot it; gosh, it’s over 100 years old—probably close to 120 years old—and it’s still as accurate as it was when it was new. It’s my one little artifact that he passed down to me. I have some of his tools, too. He was a mechanic for a time; he was a truck driver when he married Mom, then became a mechanic, and eventually settled down and worked for Diebold. They made safes, and that’s what he did until he retired.
The “Herding Cats” Years
That’s kind of my childhood in a nutshell. In junior high and high school, I was very quiet; I didn’t talk much. Most of the time, with seven kids, our parents had a hard time taking us anywhere. I mean, how do you control seven? It’s like herding cats.
Dad didn’t have a station wagon until probably the mid-60s. Before that, we had some of those older Nashes and so forth that were big. If you remember the movie A Christmas Story, I think they had an Oldsmobile. One vehicle we had had suicide doors—the rear-hinged doors—and the seats were massive. Someone could even lie in the back window ledge; that’s how big they were. You could carry a lot of kids back there. By the time we were old enough for a station wagon, we could just stay home, so that solved that problem.
Most of my friends were at home—the neighborhood boys and my brothers. We did so much stuff together it was unreal. I feel for people who don’t have big families because you don’t generate that kind of camaraderie unless you’ve got a lot of brothers. There were a lot of fights, of course. Most of the kids in the neighborhood were boys, so I felt for my sisters because there weren’t many girls around. We played football in side yards, softball, and in any open field we could find.
Halloween Pranks
Halloween was different. As you got older, it became about what you could move and how many pranks you could pull. I remember an article about the people in the Hartville area—the Mennonite or Pennsylvania Dutch types. They were a religious sect who had beards and wouldn’t use electricity. They would actually take wagons apart and reassemble them on top of people’s houses overnight! We decided we’d do something like that. I remember some guy left his garage door open, so we literally emptied that garage out and stacked everything in front of it. We did it in under an hour and nobody knew.
We did stuff like that all night long. We even got shot at one time! Nobody really meant to hit us, though. One of the guys with us had grabbed a flare out of a garage, and we ran off into a cornfield. We were far enough in that he lit the flare and waved it around. The guy took a shot toward the flare and that was it. We were laughing like crazy; it was just kids being idiots.
We used to roam for miles just having fun. Once, we stuffed some shirts and jeans with newspapers to make it look like a kid. When a car passed by, we threw it out in front of it. The guy hit the brakes and they screeched; when he came out and realized it was a dummy, boy, the expletives flew! We realized then that it was a bad idea, so we didn’t do that anymore. But things like that were commonplace for boys that age with nothing to do after dark.
Sports and First Jobs
In high school, I tried football, but I was way too small. I found out that at my school, you had to be close to 180 pounds just to survive. So, I ran track. It was easy for me because I liked running, but it got in the way of having a job. I had a job when I was 13 as a cleanup kid at a golf course. My sister and older brother had both worked there; in fact, he moved to a better job and I took his place. That’s how I got into playing golf, because I could play for free and keep whatever clubs people lost or left behind. I quit working to run track for two years, but then I just got tired of not having any money, so I went back to work.
Heart Murmurs to Half Marathons
When I got past 12, the heart murmur went away. As I got older and they found out more about heart murmurs, it showed—especially for males—that you tend to grow out of it. It was a growth issue that you didn’t really notice in adults; you noticed them in kids, but they didn’t have enough data back then to keep track of those kids as they aged. As the data started showing up, it proved that as males grew older, the murmur literally dissipated.
I remember the first time I mentioned to a doctor that I had a heart murmur when I was younger. We were doing physicals at school and there was just chaos in the locker room. The doctor asked if I had any conditions, and I said, “I have a heart murmur.” He said, “Wait a minute. Shut that door. Shut those kids up over there.” Once he got some quiet, he said, “Okay, let’s slow this down.” He took his time and then went, “I don’t hear any evidence of it.” I told him it had apparently gone away. I didn’t worry about it after that.
As an adult, I’ve won half marathons and one triathlon. I ran with my sister when I was in my early 30s back when I could do that kind of thing. I don’t have the time for it anymore, but it was a great period.
The Younger Athlete
I started high school when I was only 15. Since my birthday was in September and I started school when I was five, I was younger than most of the other guys. I graduated when I was 17 and started at Ohio State at 17. I never really thought about the fact that I was almost a year younger than most of them. If I had, I probably would have changed my attitude about some things; I just never really paid much attention until I got older and realized, “No wonder I was smaller than the football players.” I was almost a year behind them, so it’s no wonder I had a hard time with it.
As a sophomore, I ran a 5:01 mile, which wasn’t too bad. I didn’t realize it was all that good until I quit and had been away from it for a while. That was pretty good for that age. I should have stayed with it, but it’s too late now.
Discipline of the Distance
Running distances was a discipline. When I got out of college, I coached junior high track for a couple of years. I coached the distance runners with real intent because it was an opportunity for me to teach them. As a distance runner, you have to deal with one thing: pain. Your legs hurt, your calves hurt, and if you don’t run right, your feet will hurt. If you don’t practice right, a lot of things will hurt. You end up with an oxygen deficiency and your lungs hurt.
If you want to be successful, you have to discipline yourself to look past that. You have to realize that you’re pushing your physical self to a borderline. You learn where that borderline is so that you don’t pass out, but you stay competitive. You push yourself until you find that limit and you do the best you can.
At the end of my final year coaching, they gave me a little plaque that said, “Thank you for being more of a coach than a coach.” Some of them actually came back later and said they learned a lot from me. I think that’s what distance runners learn, and it’s why I liked it. When I hear about people like Navy SEALs, it’s the same thing—they push to the edge. That’s when you know where your limit is, and that’s important for an athlete. All good athletes know where that line is, and that is why they are successful.
Lessons in Parenting and Athletics
I’ve always been involved in athletics, and I pushed my kids to be in athletics as much as I could. However, I learned my lesson: don’t push your kids to be the same kind of athlete you were. You don’t want them competing with what you did because that’s not a good thing. I tried to get my sons to play golf, but they didn’t like golf. I tried to get my oldest son into basketball because he’s tall, but he didn’t like basketball. I learned real quick to just let them do what they like doing and let them have their own success. They’ll love it more that way.
I also learned that they won’t always listen to what Dad says! It was a comical thing. I remember having a conversation in one of our classes about the time I yelled at my son, Darren, while he was getting ready to hit a penalty kick. He actually stopped! I felt like crawling into a hole. My wife, Paula, was saying, “I can’t believe you did that.” Everybody was laughing. The lesson was: don’t listen to your dad when you’re on the field. Most athletes learn not to listen to the crowd anyway.
It was a learning lesson for me, but athletics were good for my kids. You have to learn how to win and how to lose. Losing is never fun, but you have to learn how to handle it because you can’t always win. Sometimes you lose even when you thought you shouldn’t—that’s just the way it goes.
I don’t know what else I could say, to tell you the truth.
Republic Steel to the Classroom
I had just finished my freshman year at Ohio State. I had never dated in high school; I think I only just got my driver’s license my senior year. I didn’t even have a car until Dad found a guy with an old, beat-up ’59 Ford that I got for 60 bucks. He thought it had a carburetor problem, but it turned out the throttle mix needle valve was leaking. I found it and fixed it. It was a nice-looking car once I cleaned it up.
That summer, I got a job at the Republic Steel mill. I knew a guy from high school named Ron; he was in the same college-prep track I was in. I was the first member of the Covert side of the family to ever go to college. Ron called me after I got out for the summer and asked what I was doing. I told him I was working at Republic. He said, “My sister’s having a birthday party. Would you like to come?” I figured I had nothing else to do, so I went.
That’s when I met Paula. We went out on a double date with Ron and his girlfriend. Later, I took my Ford and we went to Virginia Kendall Park (between Akron and Canton), and that’s when we started dating. We have a photo collage on our living room wall that still sits there today; the first picture is of us at Virginia Kendall. I was a freshman and she had just graduated.
We dated through the summer, though long-distance calls were expensive back then. I proposed after my sophomore year of college. We married on August 9th, 1969, right after I graduated.
A Tale of Two Schools
During my senior year, I student-taught in Cleveland as part of a pilot program at Ohio State. It was a fascinating experience because I saw two completely different worlds.
Half the day, I taught at a West Side school that was primarily Polish and Russian—all white. The other half of the day, I taught in an all-Black section of Cleveland in the Hough area, which had seen riots just the summer before. I spent time with the truant officer on that side of town. The difference between those two schools was night and day. It was hard to believe the same amount of money was being allocated to both.
It wasn’t just the kids; it was an unbelievable amount of mismanagement. The truant officer on the East Side was like a social worker, but he was blunt. He didn’t accept excuses. If a boy said he didn’t have shoes or clothes to go to school, the officer would drive him to the Amvets store, get him what he needed, and say, “There. Now you have no excuse. You’re going to be in school from here on out.”
In those East Side homes, the mothers often worked hard to keep the houses nice, but there were no men in the households. None of them. It was obvious that the welfare system back then was practically designed to take the male out of the house. On the West Side, however, the dads were there, they had jobs, and very few people were on welfare. That school ran like a clock.
The Science of Teaching
I learned to be an entertainer. I guess I learned to be an entertainer because if you’re a science teacher, you can entertain. I felt for people who taught English and stuff, who just had to talk. But you could put on experiments; it was a show. You put on the show and kept the kids’ attention. In the equipment room on the East Side, there was almost nothing there, or it was just junk. On the West Side, however—you name it, they had it.
Did the science departments have the same budget? Oh yeah, the same amount of money. So where did it go? You’d have to ask them. It was amazing. Needless to say, I took the job on the West Side because I couldn’t handle that environment. One of the guys who was a teacher for one of the groups we had—I was one of the Science teachers, while others taught English or Math—was a guy who graduated from Notre Dame. I think he taught English. He was in his third year at Wilson Junior High School. He told us that it was his last year. He couldn’t do it anymore. He was burned out after three years. He said, “I can’t take it anymore.” The kids loved him, but he said, “I just can’t take it.” When you can’t keep a teacher for more than three years because they’re burned out, that shows you how bad it is.
Hard Lessons in the Late ’60s
I felt for him. There was no way to stop it once it started falling apart. It was just seriously sad. Any kid who comes out of that environment has to be a semi-miracle. In fact, one kid in that junior high—not in one of the classes I student-taught—came in, put his head down, and never lifted it again. He died of an OD. That was just one day. Another day when I was there, somebody came into the parking lot and started shooting the cars. Just shooting them. It was 1969, maybe late 1968. I learned another hard lesson: the teaching environment changes drastically when you get into a place that’s been challenged like that. If a kid makes it out, the parent is really fighting an uphill battle.
It was bad enough at the school I was at, Mooney. I think that school had somewhere around a 40 percent divorce rate, and yet it was great. Most of the kids at Wilson didn’t have fathers—almost all of them were divorced or never had a father. It was bad. And of course, the riots had happened just that summer before, so I was a little hesitant to be in there. Being white, it was kind of uncomfortable, to say the least. But teaching was a lot of fun for me while I was there.
The Financial Collapse
It went south during the last year I taught. They ended up reevaluating the real property values in the city of Cleveland. Real estate values drove the taxes for schools. When real estate values go up, the schools get more money; when they go down, they get less. In Cleveland, the city had aged. A lot of companies had left or were leaving during the ’60s, so when they re-evaluated, they took a big hit. That was 1977 or 1978.
We were warned the school might have a problem. Well, I went four weeks without a paycheck. It was like, “Okay, what are we going to do?” Of course, the teachers had a union. Having been in the Steelworkers Union during the summer once, I saw a big difference. They never struck when I was there, and everybody still went to work. I wondered, “How do you get everyone’s attention that this can’t function this way?” So, I said I wasn’t going in.
Luckily, one of the art teachers had married a guy who taught with me—Chuck, who is my youngest son’s godfather. Chuck went on to get a PhD at Ohio State. Anyway, his father-in-law owned a greenhouse not far from the school, so I worked there part-time. I went to school while they weren’t paying anybody and worked for minimum wage just to have some money.
I remember calling the bank that had our home loan. I said, “The schools aren’t paying,” and so on, “and I just want you to know we’re going to have a hard time making payments.” They told me, “Well, we won’t foreclose this month.” I said, “Excuse me?” They just repeated, “We won’t foreclose this month.” Oh wow, that’s reassuring! So, I think we got paid for another few weeks, and then it happened again. We went three weeks without pay, and I said, “I can’t do this.”
Transition to the Chemical Business
I put out feelers for work and interviewed at a chemical company where the fathers of two of my students worked. I ended up getting a job at Harshaw Chemical. It was a rough decision because I had three honors biology classes with incredibly smart kids (IQs of 140–150). They were not happy I was leaving. They told me I was letting them down and that I was supposed to be “dedicated.” I told them, “I am dedicated—to my family.”
I stayed in the chemical business until I retired. Most of the science department eventually left teaching. My friend Larry stayed a year after they started busing, but he told me later, “I don’t teach anything anymore. I just control chaos.” It was a sad way to see a school system fall apart.
Successes and Tragedies
Teaching was fun when you had kids who wanted to learn. I remember one student, Pierre, who was brilliant. He knew exactly how to work the system; he transferred schools specifically to rank number one in his class so he could get into the Air Force Academy. He eventually graduated number one there, too.
But there were tragedies, too. One of my former students ended up in prison. He got jealous at a party, had a revolver, and accidentally killed someone. It was a tragedy—a kid who should never have ended up in prison but lost his temper at the wrong time.
Those are my teaching stories. It was an experience, but I’m glad I made the move when I did.
Reflections on a Changing World
The area where I worked in Cleveland used to be a very wealthy part of town. Slowly but surely, people moved out of Shaker Heights to suburbs further east. They sold their houses at lower and lower prices, and as the population shifted, the area fell into disrepair. I remember going back ten years later and I just couldn’t believe it. Big mansions were in total ruin; it literally looked like a slum.
I worried about the West Side, too. It was mostly Polish and Russian, but its economy was based on the steel mills. When the steel mills left, I would dare say it likely became a series,” probably ghettos.” That’s my guess, anyway.
Lessons in Value and Inflation
My dad taught me to never stop learning. Every person who has ever been alive has been through similar cycles. I learned a lot about the Weimar Republic in Germany and their hyperinflation. I’ve seen similar things happen recently after the pandemic—I call it a “fake pandemic” because I don’t believe it was what they said it was. The printing of money and the insanity that happened when the government tried to control everything caused so much pain and suffering that didn’t have to happen.
The government tried to fund so much stuff it couldn’t afford. I feel for young people who can’t afford a home now. I could barely afford one back when we bought ours with interest rates at 11%, but today it’s even sadder. My advice is to never stop doing the things that help you avoid those traps. Buying property is the best investment you can make, no matter how small. Buy precious metals—buy whatever hedges you can against people who want to print money.
I’m actually expecting a call from a guy cutting some of my timber. I bought 30 acres when I could and I’m selling the timber off now for almost what I originally paid for 20 of those acres. It’s just poplar timber, which isn’t worth much, but it will help me re-carpet my house. That was my intent 30 years ago when I bought the land—that one day it would serve a purpose. Think wisely about your money. You can’t lose if you put it into real estate or education; those are things that printing money won’t destroy. Once you have an education—whether it’s a trade school or a degree—they can’t take it away from you.
Health, Genetics, and Family
We’ve lost uncles and brothers to a condition we’ve since learned runs in the family: blood clotting. My older brother died of a heart attack that I believe was caused by a clot. I’ve had blood clots in my lungs. My younger brother had a heart attack and has bad clots in his legs; he’s on Eliquis now after being on Warfarin. I even have a son who passed out because of clots in his lungs.
If my uncles had known about this or if modern medicines had existed then, they probably would have lived full lives. Now, all my grandkids and kids know about it and get checked. Those are important things to pass down. However, I get concerned when people talk about manipulating genetics. When I heard the term “messenger RNA” for vaccinations, I thought it was insane. I don’t believe you can truly control that, and I’m amazed people in the know went along with it. I’m not a biologist by trade, but I know enough to be scared of it.
’59 Ford and “High Times”
I have some neat stories about my cars. My first was a ’59 Ford Dad go me, it was a 65 dollar Ford. We had to tow it home. The first time I fired it up, the engine caught fire because of a leaky needle valve in the carburetor. Since Dad was a mechanic, he knew what to look for. I put a new needle in it and used some sealer to get it to seat properly.
He told me to check the valve head covers, and when I did, the gunk was so thick I had to use a putty knife to scrape it out. I couldn’t get the oil filter off with my hands—I had to drive a crowbar through it to pry it off! The guy before me must have never changed it. The valves clattered so loudly that Dad suggested we “shim up” the main bearings. I dropped the oil pan, scraped the crud out, and shimmed the bearings. It quieted it down pretty well. Dad was amazed the thing even ran.
I eventually traded it for a ’63 Corvair. I loved that car; it was a hardtop, which meant it didn’t have a center post between the windows. I couldn’t afford real white-wall tires, so I bought “port-a-walls”—fake white sidewalls that you tucked into the rim. They looked great. The inside was white with black spots, but the previous owner had smoked so much the interior was yellow with nicotine. I used a whole bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap to get it clean. We used to cruise around Canton, driving through places like Sonic. It was a big thing for teenagers to drive through in nice cars. You might buy a hamburger and a Coke for a quarter. Those were high times.
The State of Education
I only made it through school because of “Grant-in-Aid.” With seven kids and both parents working, money was tight. Had it not been for that pilot program my senior year, I never would have finished at Ohio State.
I look at the world now and I’m confused. I have a grandson in Georgia with a 4.2 GPA and AP courses who can’t get into Georgia Tech. I don’t understand what’s going on—it seems if you don’t have a certain skin pigmentation, you’re out of luck. My first year at Ohio State, room and board was $1,700 total. Now, it’s over $70,000 a year. That is insane. Back then, if you had a C average, they couldn’t turn you down unless they were full. Now, if you don’t have a B+ or better, you can’t even get in.
I’m glad to see people like Mike Rowe trying to get trade schools started again. My sister and brother-in-law only finished their degrees because they “co-oped” (worked while in school). It’s just so hard to afford it anymore, and I think “DEI” and degrees in “Studies” are getting in the way of actual value. I remember getting flak from engineers when I moved into the chemical plant because I didn’t have a “classical education” in arts and music. I told them, “I’m here to do a job.”
Architecture, Art, and Value of a Trade
My brother was really good at drafting in high school, and I thought, “Well, I could do that.” Larry got straight A’s in drafting, of course. He never actually got into the profession, though, because manual drafting eventually got replaced by CAD and computer programs; nobody drafts by hand anymore. I started off in that field, but I really struggled.
I ran into a friend of mine from graduation who had a twin brother at Kent State; he was also at Ohio State for architecture. I ran into him over the summer and asked, “How did you do during your freshman year?” He said he had no problem at all. I asked him what courses he took, and he said he took the same ones I did, but he had majored in art. His uncle was an architect and had told him, “Major in art in high school and you’ll breeze through it.”
I hadn’t done that; I took drafting. It turns out architecture is essentially art. I never knew that, and nobody I talked to—including my high school counselor—knew to tell me that. My counselor just said, “Yeah, go ahead and take some drafting; you’ll be all right.” If I had taken art classes, I would have been fine. It was nuts, but you live and learn. Now, I try to tell my kids to ask someone actually in the field rather than a counselor. Counselors really don’t know.
Mechanic’s Intuition
My son Kevin went to Marshall Tech because he wanted to be a mechanic. He learned things about carburetors and electrical connectors that I had never even dreamed of. He could take those connectors apart and put them back together easily; I never realized cars had so many different kinds.
He did well and made good money at it. Now he’s in parts, which is funny because he works in a Ford area and has mechanics come to him for help. He tells me he can’t believe some of these guys getting associate degrees in mechanics. He says they are “dumb as rocks” and don’t know anything. He has to explain things to them constantly.
That’s the thing with education: it has to stay at a high caliber. If they dumb it down, it doesn’t help anyone.
The Honest Approach
Kevin would probably still be a mechanic if he hadn’t moved into parts. When he was a mechanic, he was honest with everyone. He’d say, “I’m not going to lie to you; you don’t need this, you need that.” Because of that, he had a loyal clientele. People would come back specifically for him. It’s the same thing now that he’s in parts; people come in and say, “I want to talk to Kevin.” He can tell them exactly what part they need and how to install it. He’s done very well for himself.
Curtis has had a lot of trouble with his truck lately, even though it’s a new vehicle. Kevin has been giving him advice. Personally, I wouldn’t buy a new vehicle right now. I hear more horror stories about new cars than I care to count.