This editorial is likely on a subject less important to many of you but to me, it is very important. So if you decide the lack of council jabbing isn’t to your liking, you might want to read something else.

As many of you know, I have two children, James, who is 15, and Lynnae, who turned 14 last week. Lynnae hasn’t quite hit the point of “the bug,” but James defiantly has.

Think back to your days as a 15-year-old, or better yet, let me set the stage: He runs down to the local convenience store every Sunday night to get the latest Auto Trader. He brings home every conceivable truck magazine there is. Today, that means 20 different titles, which is a big change from reading Hot Rod or Trucking magazines when I was 15. He talks about stupid stuff at the dinner table like, “Dad, maybe I will just break the windshield that’s in the truck so we can get new molding.”

Have you ever heard a more stupid idea than to waste the cost of a windshield just so we can buy new rubber to go around the windshield, thus forcing us to get a new windshield? Well, yes. Something like that would have come out of my mouth 25 years ago.

Or the other inevitable question is, “Hey Dad, what color should I paint it?” Now that question has had the whole family throwing in their two cents, from keeping it the same color, brown, to whatever he wants. We have decided on yellow after some heavy influence from Dad. (I love Corvette yellow.) But the whole car project makes it painfully obvious that we are raising a throw-away generation.

The days of meticulous dismantling have given way to, “We can get a new one of those.” Hey wait a minute, I would have said the same thing 25 years ago and would have had the entire truck dismantled in two or three days with parts laying in every corner of the garage. (For some reason, taking things apart is so simple and the logical process of unbolting and tossing is naturally engrained in the male persona.)

Of course, there is a difference in ordering old truck parts. Hundreds of Web sites make the search too convenient. When I first mentioned that we would have to head to the local junk yard to get parts, James looked at me puzzled. “No way Dad, I already found the parts on the Internet, and I can use my debit card to buy them.”

What? No grease under the nails or skinned knuckles from trying to take parts off an old vehicle in an oil-covered wrecking yard with the smell of stale interior trim permeating my nostrils? What has the world come to? In reality, the knuckles and scrapes come from the dismantling and assembly. I had forgotten how much it hurt to catch a pinky between the wrench handle and the edge of a frame rail.

Luckily, James is funding the project, with a little help from Mom and Dad, through summer jobs. I really think it does a disservice to a kid to just hand them things, and I think having him do a large chunk of the work on his truck makes him appreciate it more and gives him some mechanical skills. Heck, that’s how I learned.

But there is also a balance between the monetary reality of needing certain things and enjoying the experience of high school. We have made a conscious decision to help our kids a bit so they don’t feel the need to get jobs that require specific hours or prevent them from participating in school activities. High school only happens once and the experience and memories you take away will last a life time.

But, back to the truck. We have it pretty much dismantled and most of the parts have been labeled. Now the reconstruction begins.

The first task was to find parts and, low and behold, my old friend (and pseudo father figure to a lot of Fall City kids) Gene Stevens had an old 1973 Chevy that he bought new. I had, in fact, driven the truck many times picking up fruit for the store in Eastern Washington. I think he had grandiose plans to restore it one day but one quick phone call to his wife Carol, offering to get it out of the yard, worked like a charm. I stopped by the store and with his head hung low a bit, Gene handed me the keys and said to go get it.

For those of you looking for parts, try the wife channel. They always want a hunk of junk out of the yard and will gladly help their husbands part with old treasures.

But there are more parts needed so our search continues. This is as good a time as any to add, if you have any parts for a Chevy pickup, 1973-1980, give me a call.

So we have the color picked out and are working on some rusty spots. But the project has given me the bug of working on something mechanical and watching the fruits of a person’s labor create a masterpiece again.

The funny thing is, I am fighting with my son to read the stupid truck magazines with many of them piled beside the bed at night. My fingernails are dirty and my knuckles are scraped up, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. The kids are only four years from high-school graduation and every minute of that time counts, no matter how many bloody knuckles it might cost me.

And when Lynnae gets the bug, I will be right there, ready to suggest a vehicle and start on another masterpiece.

One last word of caution: In April of 2004, if you see a Corvette-yellow pickup truck coming down the road towards you, give it a little extra room, please.