I started my own repair business in eighth grade. Today, retired, I am part of the global fix-it movement.
Fixing broken things was part of my family life.
I was born in New York and grew up in New Jersey in a house with lots of tools, a garage, a workshop in the basement and a garden. My father was a Depression-era baby who grew up with a sense of frugality. He had been through some pretty tough times because his parents were refugees from Eastern Europe. He was an electronics engineer trained in the US Army Signal Corps during World War II. Thanks to her work, my parents were able to move from a small apartment in the Bronx to a house in Queens and later to a new house in suburban NJ.
In this postwar suburban growth spurt, people acquired a lot of things that would eventually break. My dad didn't throw away broken stuff - we fixed everything, sometimes with the help of my Uncle Arnold, a mechanical engineer who designed hydraulic control systems for the US Navy (he had a machine shop in his basement !). We loved solving these repair puzzles and were all known around the neighborhood and family as the people who have the tools and knowledge to fix anything.
My father was a pioneer in consumer electronics. He worked for Emerson Radio & Television, where he designed and tested "Hi-Fi" radios, "stereos" and later color televisions (we were the first in the neighborhood to have one). Back in the 1960s, my dad gave me an Emerson six-transistor portable AM radio! Our home workshop was filled with his audio experiences in his quest for the perfect sound.
Dad taught me how to solder at a very young age so I could help him build his audio projects. He often needed another pair of hands and loved my small fingers and piercing eyes for detailed work. We built all kinds of crazy stuff. Some things caught fire. Some things didn't work. We had a great time.
Find a vocation
Perhaps due to my inherited sense of frugality, I noticed people throwing away useful things at night as garbage. I would see a vacuum cleaner, a lamp, a kitchen appliance or maybe a complete dishwasher. And I thought to myself, “…there must be useful parts in there. »
When I was in middle school, when people were taking out their trash, I would often ride my bike and collect pieces of their trash. With tools in my bike basket, I quietly collected useful parts like power cords, switches, valves, and motors. The summer between seventh and eighth grade, the local central New Jersey newspaper announced, “Hey, kids. Free summer job ads. Send us a classified ad. We will print it for free. So I put “Omega Appliance Repair. No job too big or small,” along with my phone number. (I guess I was thinking of the Omega Man movie that was playing in theaters at the time.)
Fixing broken things was part of my family life.
I was born in New York and grew up in New Jersey in a house with lots of tools, a garage, a workshop in the basement and a garden. My father was a Depression-era baby who grew up with a sense of frugality. He had been through some pretty tough times because his parents were refugees from Eastern Europe. He was an electronics engineer trained in the US Army Signal Corps during World War II. Thanks to her work, my parents were able to move from a small apartment in the Bronx to a house in Queens and later to a new house in suburban NJ.
In this postwar suburban growth spurt, people acquired a lot of things that would eventually break. My dad didn't throw away broken stuff - we fixed everything, sometimes with the help of my Uncle Arnold, a mechanical engineer who designed hydraulic control systems for the US Navy (he had a machine shop in his basement !). We loved solving these repair puzzles and were all known around the neighborhood and family as the people who have the tools and knowledge to fix anything.
My father was a pioneer in consumer electronics. He worked for Emerson Radio & Television, where he designed and tested "Hi-Fi" radios, "stereos" and later color televisions (we were the first in the neighborhood to have one). Back in the 1960s, my dad gave me an Emerson six-transistor portable AM radio! Our home workshop was filled with his audio experiences in his quest for the perfect sound.
Dad taught me how to solder at a very young age so I could help him build his audio projects. He often needed another pair of hands and loved my small fingers and piercing eyes for detailed work. We built all kinds of crazy stuff. Some things caught fire. Some things didn't work. We had a great time.
Find a vocation
Perhaps due to my inherited sense of frugality, I noticed people throwing away useful things at night as garbage. I would see a vacuum cleaner, a lamp, a kitchen appliance or maybe a complete dishwasher. And I thought to myself, “…there must be useful parts in there. »
When I was in middle school, when people were taking out their trash, I would often ride my bike and collect pieces of their trash. With tools in my bike basket, I quietly collected useful parts like power cords, switches, valves, and motors. The summer between seventh and eighth grade, the local central New Jersey newspaper announced, “Hey, kids. Free summer job ads. Send us a classified ad. We will print it for free. So I put “Omega Appliance Repair. No job too big or small,” along with my phone number. (I guess I was thinking of the Omega Man movie that was playing in theaters at the time.)
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