Life lessons slap you right in the kisser, some are good others not! I realized several things right off, Folks always discount your position in the game based on their incompetence, it is a way for them to equal the playing field in their mind not in the reality of the situation.
Knowledge is Your Savings Bank.
As my “want to” powered my ‘need to know’ I ran across a traveling preacher, EJ Daniels, his message for the kids was simple, you can have all the talent and knowledge you want, the good lord will never take anything away from you are using! The one thing he failed to tell us as kids was that as generous as the good lord is, humans are quick to challenge your knowledge if they personally don’t endorse the source. Racers, Educators, Professors, Bankers, are quick to discount your experience, talent and confidence based on a timeline of age that they gained their knowledge. At age 12, I was formally trained to align OEM’s chassis on Hunter alignment equipment, and I’m still challenged at 63 years old by engineering professors discounting 30 years’ experience over their engineering degree.
Always be a student of your adventure!
The 2nd thing was a lesson my maternal grandfather taught me that included but was not limited to baseball. I love only one ball and stick game, baseball, the reason came in a series of lessons that still to this day set my mindset on the way to approach to any new adventure. Gramp sort of got thrown into the little league coaching deal when I was 7 years old, his family had a history of coaching, he loved baseball, so I threw him in the water, and he decided to help. On the first day of practice he set a group of 7- and 8-year-old heathens down and taught us our first lesson in the mechanics of baseball, not just the rules, but how to play the game, how to think baseball, we learned everything from counting pitches, the mechanics of the infield in motion, the responsibilities of each player, the unspoken code of respect to your team members and teams you beat, along with every combination of playing the hit ball. He called it being a “student of the sport”. We won 21 straight games that year and were baseball players for life.
It’s only stuff!
The 3rd and next lesson was the value of stuff. 1971 as we started building the 56, I was as invested as any one person could be. My life choice to build cars was evident, racing cars even more so. I dove hard in my quest for knowledge in the racing game, every breath was focused on the 56, every dollar I could find was invested, as we started testing, I realized that race cars wreck. Dad got disorientated on the track one afternoon, over drove the corner and into a deep ditch on the front stretch and up on two wheels, spun around, hit a pylon. We loaded up went home. The team knocked out the dent in the rocker and we painted it up for the 1973 season. No harm no foul. The first night of the 1973 racing season taught me another a valuable lesson that complements my approach to everything material. We unloaded, ran practice, the nerves set in, we ran the heat race, not eventful, by the time the car lined up for the feature I was losing it. All the time, money, labor, research, could be gone in a minute. My dad said if you want, we will load it up. At that point I was trying to accept the fact we came to race, Huey Mercer, said car is fast, but Josie is learning, his inexperience will keep it out of harm’s way. I had worn out the ground walking back and forth, as the feature parade laps started, I was on edge but ready, they threw the green flag, off into one the field went then chaos ensued! Next what happened gets blurry, all I remember is a yellow car flipping out thru the cow pasture, cars crashed everywhere, I jumped down from our truck ran to the first turn and across the track to the yellow car, as I got there, I realized it wasn’t our car, I turned quickly looking away from the wreckage to see our car setting under the flagman’s red flag without a scratch. Lawrence Walker another friend patted me on the back and said, “damn there for a minute I thought we was going to have to build another shit box”! As I walked back the 12-year-old in me realized that getting that torn up over something I could easily replace was crazy. From that moment on I have never had an issue with crashing any car I had built; chances are before the wreckers are hooked up, I had a plan in place to fix it or build another one. I am often asked which car is my favorite car. From that early spring day in 1973, I have no love for the car I built yesterday and racing now, but I love the concept of the next one I am going to design and build.
If you Are Going to Speak in German, Think in German
Lesson 4 targets a story with as many versions as teachings of the New Testament, multiple versions, one story. My father’s oldest sister married a Daytona, FL cracker, a man that was rigid as the coquina rock he lived on, a craftsman with many talents but everyone totally blue collar. After a decade of marriage and 3 kids her “want to be uptown” meant finding a path away from her roots. Uncle Jimmy was soon gone; Uncle Art entered the picture. The story from once removed family, was Art was a New York socialite, military man, German dissent, refined by FL cracker standards, my personal relationship was cordial, he was proper, sharp clear mind, business centered. As I understand from members of the family, he was a translator in the Army. Uncle Art himself told us a story one time about translating that stuck as a life lesson 4. Whether Art or not, the content complimented the life lesson already in my head. He said that a young translator was recruited and sent directly to England because he was fluent in German. The first days he read one after the other radio transcript, than direct radio contacts, he even transmitted messages, until the day they transferred a prisoner to England, the dude was a tank operator, Art or not, drilled the guy for information, he was getting nowhere. They called in a seasoned interrogator, he set down and 30 minutes later walked out with great intel. The Translator asked the seasoned interrogator what just happened, he explained, you are a master of the German language, your dialect matches the region we are working in, but you are thinking in English, and talking in German, they know. There have been times in my life, specialty in the early days of racing, on the search for information I was talking perfect German but was thinking in English, I always felt that from a design side that speaking to automotive engineers, mechanical engineers, civil engineers, professors, administrators, then to skilled trades, and racers I needed to speak 20 different dialects. More than once I walked into situations thinking in English but talking in German. Even today I tell my students it is critical to prepare to speak and think in the same language of the folks that lend them information and be prepared to speak and think in multiple mental languages. Communication is key. The information you need is like paint in individual cans, the colors are hidden in each can until you open the can, it’s always the engineer in you that takes those multiple sources of color and paints the complete picture.