Knuckleheads

In the summers during my high school years I was a bus mechanic’s apprentice. Ralph, the mechanic, wore thick-rimmed glasses which always sat crookedly on his nose, not because the glasses were bent but because the nose was. Ralph looked like he had taken a few punches in his youth. If you made a mistake, and even if you didn’t, he called you a knucklehead. But he had a way of saying it that made you feel he still liked you. Ralph loved the Lord, working on engines and teaching boys how to love the Lord and work on engines.

On my first day, Ralph asked me if I knew anything about mechanic work. I did not. He asked if I knew anything about tools. Precious little. So my first assignment was to remove every tool from his enormous, red, three-level tool box, clean all of them, then put them back in an orderly arrangement. “Don’t put 3/8 inch sockets in the same drawer with 1/2 inch ratchets. Don’t mix the metric wrenches with the standard wrenches. Got it?”

“Yes, Ralph.” Ralph insisted that I call him by his first name, though he was the same age as my father. Of course, I was perfectly clueless about what he’d meant, and he knew it. Which is exactly why he wanted me to put my hands on every tool and take the time to read the obscure little numbers stamped on each of them. Later that summer, he taught me how to fetch parts from the auto parts store. “Always, always, always take the old part with you and match it up to the new part. That way you don’t come back here and hand me the wrong part and I have to call you a knucklehead and send you back.” So I learned what the tools were and how to match parts, and Ralph saw that it was good.

The next summer, I graduated from cleaning tools and fetching parts to working under the hood. The two of us would sit up in the expansive engine well of a bus where Ralph would show and tell. All summer long Ralph showed and told. I watched and listened. When he sent me for a tool, I almost always knew what and where it was. When he sent me for a part, I almost always came back with the right one. I was not perfect, but I was making progress. And Ralph saw that it was good.

My final summer, Ralph felt confident enough to let me solo on some engine work. One day, he pulled a bus into the shop and said, “This one’s loosing compression. Probably a head gasket. Pull the head. Replace the gasket. But whatever you do, when you put it back together, don’t be a knucklehead and tighten the bolts so tight they break off in the engine block. That’s the absolute worst thing you could do.”

So, naturally, I broke a bolt off in the engine block. And Ralph saw that it was not good, and yea verily, he calleth me a knucklehead. But then, he climbed up under the hood with me and taught me how to fix it when you do the absolute worst thing you can do when you’re working on an engine.

Ralph passed away a couple of years ago. I went to his funeral and saw some of the other guys he’d mentored. We agreed that Ralph was crusty and grumpy and sometimes hard to please. But he was good to us. We learned a few things about engines, about loving the Lord, and about ourselves.

I wonder sometimes if you and I are reluctant to get really serious about discipleship because we’re afraid we’ll fail. Or because we already have. Like we forgot that being a disciple, an apprentice, a learner, is not about perfection; it’s about progress. At some point, you and I are more likely than not to break off a bolt in the engine block, morally, ethically speaking. When we do, Jesus might call us knuckleheads, but he’ll say it in a way that you know he still loves you. Then he’ll climb up under the hood with you and show you how to fix it.