25 LOST Workshop Secrets From the 1970s Every Homeowner Used to Know

In 1974, a retired railroad mechanic in Dayton, Ohio rebuilt the drivetrain of his son's push mower on a folding card table in his garage. A crescent wrench, a flat-head screwdriver, and a coffee can of parts salvaged from three broken mowers on the curb. The engine ran for another 22 years. He never owned a power tool. He was not unusual. In the 1970s, the average American garage was a working shop. A pegboard of hand tools, a vise bolted to a bench, a parts drawer built from coffee cans nailed under a shelf. Men who had come home from Korea and Vietnam had carried their training into their own basements. Their sons stood next to them on Saturday afternoons and watched. That boy is in his sixties now. His own son has never held a wrench. Number 21 uses a three-cent item from the kitchen to rescue a jacket most homeowners now throw away. Number 14 stopped squeaky floors for forty years using something every 1970s garage already had on the shelf. And number one has been so thoroughly forgotten that most men under fifty have never seen one. These 25 secrets were the ordinary Saturday-afternoon competence of a generation that believed a man who owned a house should be able to fix the house. Hit that subscribe button. Let us count down the 25 lost workshop secrets from the 1970s every homeowner used to know.