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Village Squire, 1977-06, Page 41P. S. The hairpin doesn't work but chewing gum does I hate machines. You probably know that by now if you read this column at all regularly. I hate machines for the same reason you hate swimming in deep water if you don't know how to swim: I'm over my head. It's an unnatural habitat. I always envied the guys back in High School who did well in shop classes and who seemed to spend all their spare time taking apart cars and putting them together again. Some of them even worked in garages to make extra money. Me, 1 could hardly take a stone out of the old push mower when it jammed the reels, which it seemed to do every 10 feet. It was even more embarassing for a farm boy to be such a klutz when it came to things mechanical since being a near -pro- fessional mechanic was as important to farm -life as being able to peel potatoes. If the tractor broke down, you couldn't afford to call in a mechanic for every little thing or you'd soon have to mortgage to the hilts anyway. And if the 20 -year-old car broke down on some back sideroad miles from anywhere, you had to be able to fix if yourself or face a long walk. In such a situation I'd be facing the long walk. As frustrating as things were for the non-mechanical person back then, they're getting worse. It seems that through planned obselescence things are designed to break down sooner and through planned engineering, things are planned so that the ordinary person can't fix them. It's sort of like the laws of the country which the politicians, who are most often lawyers, make so complicated that you have to have a lawyer to be able to understand what the legal mumbo -jumble says. I think the engineers who design today's machines all who have brothers-in-law's who are repairmen and they want to keep them well employed so they won't drop in for a protracted visit. That appliance repairman you see on television who's always lonely must have a breath problem because he's the only repairman I know of who doesn't have all the work he can handle. Anyway, as I was saying. things are getting super complicated these days. The old trick of the lady using her hairpin or the guy kicking a fender and the car starting working again are things of the past, though they work about as well as a lot of other techniques. The nice thing about all the sophistic- ation of today's machine is that I no longer feel inferior to as large a portion of the populace. Things are so bad that even most of the mechanically inclined don't know where to start when it comes to fixing things. The reason for all this is the use of more and more electronic gear in today's machines. I was over at a garage the other day and met a mechanic who's nearly pulling his hair out because the electonic ignition system on a new car was giving him problems. In our business things have gone the same way. The old linotype which used to set all the type in newspapers and magazines were pretty complicated outfits, but at least if you took them apart you could see that this little do-hink made the little thing-a-majig turn to the left and that little whats-it hit against that other whosit. A fair mechanical skill and some common sense and you could soon find out what was wrong with the machine. With a little skillful juggling you could also likely find out jerryrig something to fix the machine until the right part came. It was much the same with the old mechanical flat-bed presses. But a few weeks ago when the huge press at our printing plant broke down in the :niddle of the heaviest workland of the week, the source of the breakdown in the complicated electrical system so mustified the skillful workmen that they finally had to surrender and wait for a repairman to arrive from the city to put the pieces back together. Things are even worse with the modern machines that set the type for most publications. While the press still has a large mechanical element and a small electronic one, the typesetters are nearly entirely electronic. Inside one of the machines look like a spaghetti dinner without the meat sauce. Wires go this way and that without any kind of visible logic. It's clearly territory for experts only because you can't tell just by looking what is wrong, unless it's something obvious like the fact some mice have nested on a circuit board and chewed up the wires for a little mineral in their diet. 4th Annual SEAFORTH CRAFT FESTIVAL Saturday July 9 10 A.M. TO 5 P.M. at the Seaforth Community Centre CRAFTS OF ALL KINDS FOR SALE DEMONSTRATIONS COUNTRY BAKING LUNCH AVAILABLE DRUMCLOG FARM CRAFTS For the Handspinner Scottish Spinning Wheels Drop Spindles Carders British Fleece Canadian Fleece Books Write for our price list and free samples R. R. 5 Brussels NOG 1H0 • VILLAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1977, 39.