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HIGGS: Bonding over cars on Fatherâs Day

Some fathers and sons bond over tossing a baseball or football around the yard. My dad and I bonded over cars and working on them.










Larry Higgs, @APPLarry Published 6:37 p.m. ET June 15, 2014 | Updated 6:37 p.m. ET June 15, 2014 
My father Tom Higgsâ pliers, which reminds me of the father and son bond we had over cars. (Photo: Staff Photo Larry Higgs )Buy Photo


These are my dadâs pliers. Theyâve been around since I can remember. Even as a teenager, while learning the basics of car repair and maintenance, there was one unspoken rule â they were always His Pliers.

Some fathers and sons bond over tossing a baseball or football around the yard. My dad and I bonded over cars and working on them. There is something universal about the male fascination over cars that cuts across generational boundaries. We may hate each otherâs politics, music and fashion, but cars tend to be a neutral Switzerland between the generations.

For my dad and I, the car was a place of common interest: as a kid, watching him drive; as a teen, while he was teaching me how to drive (in a drill sergeant-like fashion); and later, usually when we were under the hood, working together to keep the family fleet going or road-testing the next used car.

Today, I treat his pliers like the Holy Grail. I havenât even used them to open a stubborn bottle of beer. But they prompt a forgotten memory of him whenever I see them.

We probably lost more sets of screwdrivers and pliers between us through the years. Sometimes there was an implication that one of us had âborrowedâ the otherâs pliers and screwdrivers. My joke was that the day my parentsâ house was torn down, dozens of missing pliers and screwdrivers would cascade out of the walls.

I like to think it was the Army that gave him his love of cars. After he was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, the Army transferred him to a motor unit, where he got to drive âanything Uncle Sam owned on tracks or tires,â as he said. It was like the Army did him a favor, giving him a somewhat enjoyable assignment as small payback for his service in D-Day and the Bulge.

He never spoke about his combat experiences. June 6 was a somber day, and my mother gave him leave to drink as much as he needed to to numb the pain he never talked about. But like most veterans of that era, when we asked, he spoke of the happier experiences. Specifically, it was about the variety of vehicles he got to drive for the Army, from giant military wreckers that barely fit down narrow European streets to a specially modified Jeep they used to push around inoperable equipment. It was a nice joy ride for him from his Uncle Sam.

Even today, I keep his orange handled linemanâs pliers in a drawer along with some of his war memorabilia. Had I kept them with the other tools, they would have been lost with the car that was stolen that contained his old tool box. I was angrier about losing my dadâs tools than the loss of the car they were in.

He loved a good, fast ride and his driving ability was swift, but safe. He was always in control of that car. Coming from Florida, you might have thought heâd gravitate to racing and modifying cars. But the man was far ahead of his time, worked at programming computers when no one knew what they were. He could do mathematical equations in his head out to six decimal points.

The first time I remember working with my dad was helping him as he showed me how to repack front-end wheel bearings on a Mercury we inherited from my grandmother. It was done in his typical style of subtly imparting knowledge without trumpeting his role as all-knowing parent. Because we know how well teenagers react to that.

It was the first time I remember going to the driveway, and the beginning of many times he passed on his knowledge by showing me how it was done. That Mercury was an orphan, being produced for only two years. I spent a summer searching the junkyards of Morris and Warren counties for a replacement master cylinder for the power brake system after I graduated high school. This was before the days of getting on line and searching eBay.

He had the wisdom to know what jobs belonged in the hands of a professional mechanic. But the tune-ups, lube, filter and oil changes, exhaust system replacements, stereo installations and replacement of parts like alternators, wiper motors, power steering pumps and the like were handled in the ad-hoc Higgs garage.

He also knew when to be the voice of adult reason, slamming on the brakes and injecting a little common sense, when a friend and I happily announced our plans to rebuild the engine of an old Pontiac of mine. My dad overruled us, knowing that all things mechanical have a habit of being taken apart much easier than theyâre put back together. He spared my mother from a backyard of engine parts scattered all over and me from her wrath.

Fatherâs Day brings many of those memories back to me. They happened before cell phone cameras were available to capture every moment. I went back to some photo albums to see if there were photos of my dad next to some of the cars he loved, or the ones he loathed.

There wasnât a one. My mother got to pose next to one of his beloved Hudsons in a ski trip photo.

Fortunately, I have his pliers and the memories of him they spark, on Fatherâs Day and every day.

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