Mechanical aptitude!

I have a brother 16 years older than me. Summer 1976, I am almost 4 years old, and he is in the driveway changing 727s in his 70 Barracuda Gran Coupe. I go out to see what he's doing, and end up being his tool gopher. Later that same summer, he stuffs he inside one of his brand new M50-14 Kelly Super Chargers and rolls me around the house. He gave me a scissor jack around that same summer, and I would jack up my pedal tractor to "work" on it. Being big brother's tool gopher, I had learned my fractions before starting kindergarten.

By the time I was 7, I was stripping small parts off of any car parked in our grass that hadn't moved in a few weeks. At 8, I was helping my dad with his daily driver C-bodies, replacing starters, front brake pads, big block valve cover gaskets, etc. At 12, I was the town bicycle repair professional, and would buy beat-up yard sale bikes and disassemble, repaint, and reassemble them and resell them, or sometimes part them out, selling wheels, tires, etc to the neighborhood kids and installing what I sold. At that same age, I bought my first car, a 70 Coronet, with paper route money. And so it goes...........