He Supported His Family With A Claw Hammer And An Army-Surplus Wool Blanket

My one-and-only sister, who lives in Los Angeles, is one of the worst drivers in the Western Hemisphere. Riding with her is like taking a ride on the Coney Island roller coaster -- and I have no doubt that she holds the Southern California record for fender benders.

Anyway, in 2008, when I was vacationing in Los Angeles, my sister dented the fender on the passenger side of her brand-new Toyota as she pulled out of an indoor parking space. While backing up and steering her way out, she slammed the fender of the car into a steel pole.

She decided that she would not report the incident to her insurance carrier because during the past several months, she had already filed claims for a couple of other accidents that she was involved in. So the dent just stayed there. She told me that she would get it repaired when she got around to it.

Well, one afternoon while the two of us were sitting in her living room, the front-door bell rang. I got up to answer it and when I opened the door, there was a rather short stocky Mexican man with a walrus mustache standing there. And draped over his arm was an olive-drab wool blanket, plus he was wearing a tool belt, and next to him on the floor of the porch was a large can of what turned out to be gray primer.

We greeted one another and he asked if I owned the car parked in the driveway. I answered no and told him that it belonged to my sister.

Then, he told me that for $50, he would repair the dent on the fender, right there on the spot.

Eyeing the thick blanket that he was carrying and noticing the claw hammer that was hanging from his tool belt, I quickly surmised that the fellow could successfully do the job.

By that time, my sister was standing beside me at the door and I told her that it sounded like a good deal and she should give the guy a shot, and she agreed to let him have a go at it.

After the man had been pounding on the fender for about 20 minutes, my sister suggested that we take him a cold can of Coca Cola and we did so.

He was very grateful for the refreshment and my sister and I ended up conversing with him while he worked.

Being the entrepreneurial type I am, I could see that this man had a “real good thing” going for himself, especially in Los Angeles, the fender-bender capital of the United States of America.

So, I asked him how many jobs like the one he was doing did he do a day?

To make a long story short, he informed me that he usually did about four a day and earned an average of $250 a day, and he worked six days a week.

Yes, this Mexican man, who was probably in the country illegally, had a monthly income of about $6000 which added up to about $70,000 annually -- and he was doing it with a claw hammer, an Army-surplus wool blanket and a can of primer.

He went on to tell us that his wife was a stay-at-home mom, he had two young daughters who were going to a very good parochial school and he owned his own home in a very nice section of the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles called Chatsworth.

Well, it only took him about an hour to knock out the dent and prime it, and he did an excellent job. The surface of the once-dented fender was as smooth as it could be and the only thing left for my sister to do was take the car someplace to get the fender spot painted.

There is what I consider to be an obvious moral to this story.

In America, if one effectively uses his/her “noodle,” the sky is the limit.

To succeed in life, the only thing people have to do is get their hands on their own claw hammers and Army-surplus wool blankets.