Of Brains, Hands, and the Links Between.
Gotta say, it really resonates with me. In my younger (and poorer) days, I spent a lot of time"wrenching" on my own car (out of necessity) and for friends (out of desire for beer and pizza). I was far from a professional mechanic, but I could fix lots of stuff that it would otherwise cost of lot of money to pay a professional to attend to.
Unlike Crawford, however, I found working on cars far less rewarding than teaching and writing. That said, one of the things that struck me about it was just how differently you had to think in order to be good at each. Teaching and writing require a certain"open brain" thought process for me.
There is no harm to bouncing from one idea to the next... then backing up to collect and organize them. Working on cars, however, demanded a much more methodical and cautious approach. This was in no small part because a botched brake job could kill you (or somebody else), or because simply being careless could easily result in a nasty cut or a missing appendage.
This is probably a partial explanation as to why so many academics are a bit on the ditzy side, while mechanics (at least those with all their fingers) seem to be very rooted and practical.
Anyway, Crawford's article definately rings true in terms of just how rewarding a good repair can be, and just how smart you need to be to pull a really good fix off. And, it reminds me that I want to write a book about car culture in West Africa... with a chapter on just how smart the mechanics are.