AMCHornet wrote: ↑Sun Dec 20, 2020 1:51 am
My first real job (as in paid taxes) was at an auto parts store when I was 17 years old in 2012. They hired me straight to the counter. Rare then, unheard of now. Most people start in inventory or delivery, but I knew my stuff with cars so they gave me a chance and I seized it.
I left when I was 18 and went to college. I spent four years getting a bachelor's of science in classic car history and restoration learning most everything that a person can about everything relating to old cars. I've always been into old cars and have a small collection of my own. It was heaven and I enjoyed every minute of it. I went into the classic car restoration industry after I graduated but I left after only six months with a sour taste in my mouth that I've never been able to wash out. What a shitshow that was. Don't even get me started. I'll just say that for all the begging that the "old guard" of the classic car industry does for new, young people to learn the skills and join, they sure treat those young people like total garbage when they do.
I was better paid and better respected as an uneducated grunt in high school pushing spark plugs and air filters over a counter, so that's what I went back to and I've been there every since. I crawled back to the same store that I started at when I was 17 and asked for my job back. They were glad to have me. A few promotions and pay raises later and I can't complain. I've helped this store grow to one of the largest stores by sales volume in the U.S. and it's grown me in return. I haven't worked less than 40 hours a week for several years, even all through COVID-19. Still can't afford my own house, but that's called being 25 in this modern America. One day that will change. We will make sure of it.
So yeah. Long story short: auto parts store management.
Body shops give you shit? Try the scrap business on for size, we make body shop tough guys look like pussy's. You want to play in this field schooling may help you with the basics of using tools, or applying paint, but you need to be able to take shit and hand it right back in spades. The world of antique cars is a blue collar industry outside of the salesmen in the high end Beverly Hills vintage car showrooms. I have to admit I have never met, or even heard of anyone who went to school to learn about antique cars, let alone a four year program. Everyone I know in this business learned by doing on their own, or apprenticing in a shop. I know a few guys who went to auto tech schools, or learned mechanics in the military. Without fail everyone I know with antique vehicles started out the same way I did, an old car that needed fixing, and no money to pay someone else to do it. Back in the day money wasn't thrown at young people, you wanted a car you scraped together a couple hundred bucks worth of lawn mowing money, or minimum wage after school job and bought a shitbox. Back then fathers always had tools, and maybe would let you use them if you put them back properly once you were done. More often it was a cheap basic Craftsman set bought used when you could afford it. Then it was endless hours spent here at yards like the one I am in now searching out parts. You learned by hands on experience, I was doing major engine repairs when I was 16-17 years old, the reason being that my ride was broken, and I had no money to pay a shop to fix it. We took a lot of pride in our rides, and the fact that we did them up ourselves. Today I see some lawyer, or orthodontist showing off some fully restored muscle car that they didn't so much as turn a single screw on, just paid someone else to do it, and pay someone else to maintain it, I have zero respect for these types. I had so many old cars over the years, some weren't that old at the time, but now are antiques and historic vehicles. The list would take up most of this page, even now I still have three historic vehicles, and am tinkering with two more. Among them was 1976 AMC Hornet sportabout wagon in the same blue as the avatar pic. I had that one in 1985 when it was just old, not yet an antique. They rusted badly here and I was constantly keeping up with that, the 232 was a good engine, 904 Chrysler automatic, a nice basic sort of car. My vintage car at that time was a 1961 DeSoto 4 door hardtop with 361 and tourqeflite A automatic with no park. Tailfins, lots of chrome, front seat like a couch, I did a major on the engine right out in the driveway, that was the last year for DeSoto. You go a home shop? If so then take the skills you spent all that time and money learning and start fixing up some antiques for sale on the side. Lot easier today given that nobody wants the restored to perfection look anymore, now it's all " distressed original patina" You spray clear on the rust, but you do have to make them safe to drive. All these youtube channels with barn finds they haul out and get running after 40 years, some of these people don't know shit, but if they attract enough viewers it pays off as these channels are monetized.
Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.
Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.
Theodore Roosevelt
Other then the Plumber part! 
