Hi Jim, yes, I feel the same way! My third job in high school was working at an Exxon station. Bought my first car at 17 for $200 - it was a 1969 Belvedere taxi cab with a slant six. I couldn’t afford hiring a mechanic to fix it, so my co-workers told me to fix it myself. I learned to make repairs and as I got deeper into the whole thing, I started cursing the engineers who designed it. One of the mechanics said “if you can do a better job of designing cars, prove it.” Well, I became a mechanical engineer on that challenge, but I also wanted to be in the Air Force. So the car deSign thing was never going to happen.
I started young in life too, taking things apart and getting into trouble for doing so. But, I almost always got the things back together and they worked. Bikes were all that I had access to, so that was my specialty until I got older. I still get grease under my finger nails, but I don’t like the aches and pains from leaning over front fenders for too long. I got into flying 30 years ago and I bought a gyrocopter in 2000. I still haven’t gotten around to making it flight worthy, but someday…
