The great late father-in-law...
My ex's father (who has been dead for about 16 years now) was somewhat notorious around the area where I was born for his drunken shenanigans- I've heard more than a few stories about him. But he had one trait they never mention- his passion for what I shall generously call "redneck engineering". A few examples:

-while out mowing the lawn one day, a piece of driveway gravel was flung by the mower and shattered the glass globe on the light by the driveway. His solution? He got an old pickle jar, painted the inside white and out it upside down on the lamp post.

-the cap for the master cylinder on his car's brake system was lost. He replaced it with the lid from a jar of baby food.

-his station wagon had a pneumatic system that raised a little door over the headlight when you switched it on. The cylinder gave out on one side. Instead of repairing it, he broke off a chunk of tree branch and jammed it in there so it would be permanently open.

-due to the harsh winters in New York, cars tend to corrode pretty quickly from the salt they put down on the ice. So when his cars got holes from the rust, he patched them with furnace cement.

-he always kept a coffee can in the car. Why? In case there were no restrooms nearby.

-every room in the house had an electrical outlet that was controlled by the switch by the door. So every room had a radio in it which would turn on when you flipped on the lights. This included the bathrooms, the basement and the barn.

He used to be an insomniac, so he would often get up in the wee hours of the morning and listen to talk radio at the kitchen table. (My kids swear up and down that the last two times they stayed in that house they could hear a radio in the kitchen at night and someone moving around in there, opening the cupboards. But when they entered the room the radio was off and no one was there...)

The guy was a true nutter. No wonder my ex is batshit insane...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 5 Jul 2007, 21:19, Reply)