Commentary: Few work with their hands any longer, but I still do

It really is OK, getting more mature. I really mean older, but I have a hard time writing that.

With the extra years you get incredibly more reflective, if not maudlin, or, if you are into cars, nostalgic.

I’ve done a decent job on my bucket list: built a car and a boat and haven’t gone broke. The garden is big and, much like working on cars and boats, no one is to blame but the tools and yourself.

Men like to work on inanimate projects. We love being in charge, our way, we are the boss, in full control.

Grandkids are great because they are just like us — a stumble here, a mess there, a little drool thrown in. I really like the short sentences, and especially, the endless questions. If you are one-on-one with them you can give them any answer and feel like a genius.

The other part of semi-retirement is the acute awareness of stuff you never had time to think about. I’ve lived on my street for 35 years and never saw the activities going on because I was at the office.

The great challenge for the guy who works from his “home-office” is the noise. At first I went crazy as lawn mowers and leaf blowers were spinning as I was on conference calls with clients in the Midwest. The neighbors were a little perplexed when they saw me sitting in my car in the driveway dressed in my pajama bottoms, windows up, yakking on the cell phone.

I finally spun future disruptions into, “Oh yeah, I’m on a job site under construction.” This works if you are in construction management, which is my gig.

Of course this segues into a small peeve of mine, which is that combustion-engine leaf blowers are banned in Newport Beach. Every gardener I talked to either says he didn’t know or has paid a fine. There are no electric leaf blowers that I have found in my hood. If I didn’t work from home I could care less. I love to uncork my flathead when I get the chance.

My other observation is the new homeowner mindset. What constitutes the homeowner of the new millennium? This new breed is all about the service industry. No one works on anything anymore. And they really can’t. Why? For one they lack the know-how, and they are ill-equipped.

I have a credo for my daughters: “if the boy you’re dating doesn’t know what a vice is (I’m not talking about sin), don’t get in his car, and if he doesn’t have a work bench, think seriously about someone else.”

No one has a work bench anymore, let alone any tools. New homeowners of today just call someone. I guess while I was at work I missed all the service trucks that line my street every day.

Now that I’m home, it’s a constant parade. You hire someone to fix a gate latch. Really?

In days gone by weekends, I would run into neighbors doing a little gardening or repair work. Now I’m the solo idiot cleaning the spa filter and spraying weed killer.

America is certainly under attack from terrorism but the decline of the two-car garage with a workbench and a vice is a major crime.

BILL DUNLAP lives in Newport Beach.