The Fixers

THE FIXERS

“So, you can fix it?” asked the kid.

The old man nodded his head. “I can.”

“Wow! That’s amazing.”

The old man shrugged. “I don’t know about amazing, but it’s not that complicated. The hardest thing is finding parts.”

The kid looked from the machine to the man. “How did you learn how to fix it?”

The old man’s eyes glazed over, just a bit, as he remembered. “Well, it’s been a really long time. Our family has always been in the business. I repair them. My mother repaired them, and her father before her repaired them. Our family used to sell them, new. That’s how we got started fixing them. We became a full service shop.”

“Cool,” said the kid, nodding, looking around.

The old man continued to look at the machine. It was one of the first ones made, which was both good and bad. Good because the first generation of the machine was made with fairly good quality parts, and it was a simple machine that was easy to work with.. The later generations were the ones that became more complicated—they had bells and whistles, and were more complicated.

Bad because, the older the machine, the less likely that the needed parts could be found, and he might have to McGyver something together to make it work. Hopefully not.

The old man looked at the kid. “Where’d you get it?” he asked.

The kid stared at him. “I didn’t steal it!’

The old man laughed. “This thing’s so old, no one would want to steal this thing!” He patted the machine and looked at the kid. “I bet you found it in the attic of some house you were clearing out.”

The kid shook her head. “Nope. It’s my grandma’s. She uses it.”

That stopped the old man. “She uses it? Really?”

The kid nodded her head. “Yeah. She’s got these old time-y things that she puts inside the machine and she watches these old family movies. I don’t know what the things she puts inside are called.

“VHS tapes,” said the old man.

“Yeah—that’s right. She calls them tapes.” She nodded. “Anyway, they’re vids of her family.” She paused. “They’re all dead, now.” The old man remained silent. She continued. “They were all killed, all at once. I don’t know how. But it was her mom and dad, and brothers and sisters. She was the only one who wasn’t there. Something about a fight with her mom, and refusing to go. Nobody will tell me how they actually died, but I know she feels guilty for not going with her family that day.”

“It’s called survivor’s guilt,” said the old man.

“Sure, survivor’s guilt,” she repeated. The kid looked confused, but continued her story. “Anyway, Gram was left an orphan. She went to live with her own grandma. When the police returned her family’s belongings, there was this big old video camera—the kind that you have to put on your shoulder to record—you know what I mean?” She looked at the old man. “That’s where she found the tape.”

The old man bent down and pulled something from under the counter. “Like this?”

A big smiled cracked the kid’s face. “Wow!” she said. “It’s just like grandma’s! She still has hers sitting on a shelf surrounded by all her old tapes.”

For the first time, the old man cracked a smile, but said nothing.

The kid leaned over and looked at it. She pushed the “open” button. With a creaky whirring the side opened up. It was empty.

The old man reached under the counter again, and brought out a VHS tape, and dropped it in. He pushed the “close” button and the door whirred closed.

“Then you would push this button—the “rec” button for record.” He hoisted the dinosaur camera onto his shoulders, and showed the kid how it would work. He flipped the viewing screen out, and pushed the button. “I’m recording, now.”

The kid looked closely. “There’s a red light flashing.”

“That means that we’re recording. Like on your phone. Only not nearly as good quality.” He paused, pushed the “stop” button, and rewound the tape. He turned the viewfinder towards the kid and pushed the “play” button, and showed her the recording.

“Huh,” she said. “It really is crappy.”

The old man nodded. “It really is. But, you always have the video recordings, even if the internet goes down. You can watch them anytime as long long as you have electricity.”

“Cool,” said the kid. “Gram loves hers.”

The old man fiddled with the camera, and put it away, under the counter. “So how does your grandma have any other tapes? Or just the one?”

The kid nodded yes. “When she and her grandmother went to my Gran’s house to clear it out, they found a big box of family videos. That’s what Gran watches now. There are a lot of tapes.”

The old man nodded. “That’s why you need to have the VCR fixed? So your grandmother can watch her family videos?”

“Yeah. When she watches the videos the machine makes a grinding sound. Yesterday it ate one of the tapes. We got the tape out, and it didn’t break, but Gran was so upset. So, I unhooked it—” She nodded towards the VCR. “— and brought it in here.” She looked around. The shelves in the tiny shop were filled with old tech she had never seen before.

“How’d you know about my shop?” asked the old man.

The kid shrugged. “I dunno. Someone mentioned that there was this old man—” Her eyes went to the old man, a blush colouring her cheeks. “—No offence.”

He smiled. “None taken. I am an old man.”

“Anyway, someone told Gran that maybe you could fix the … What did you call it? The video machine?

“VCR.”

“Right. A vee-see-are.”

“It’s an acronym. It stands for video cassette recorder.”

“Cool,” said the kid nodding her head. “VCR.” She touched the machine. “So, do you think you can fix it?”

The old man pugged in the electrical cord from the machine. It lit up, the clock on the front panel blinking twelve o’clock. “At least it powers up. That’s a good sign,” said the old man. He picked up the VHS tape he’d used to record the kid, pushed the “open/eject” button, and a small tray came out of the front. He dropped the tape on the tray, spine out, and pushed the button again. The machine made a grinding sound, but the tape disappeared into the machine the way it was supposed to. Next he pulled a tangle of cords from a box, and attached them to the back of the machine. He had a little tiny twelve inch television set, and hooked the cords up to the back of that machine, then turned on the TV. A screen full of snow appeared. He pressed the play button on the front of the VCR. The grinding got louder, and the screen skipped. The old man pushed the stop button.

“Yeah! That’s what it did to Gran!” said the kid, pointing to the screen.

The old man said nothing. He got a screwdriver and unscrewed the face plate. Once it was off, he gently started to untangle the video tape that had wound itself around the innards of the machine.

“Hmmm,” he said as he freed the tape. “I should be able to fix this, no problem.”

The kid smiled. “Thanks, mister. My Gram’s gonna be so happy.” She leaned in. “Whadda have to do to fix it?”

“Well, let me show you …..”

*****

“Hey!” said the young man. “Can you fix this? Or make it work. Or, I don’t know, make it do what it was supposed to do?” He was in his twenties, tallish, glasses. He looked around the shop before his eyes settled on the woman behind the counter who was tinkering with something he couldn’t see. “I was told there was an old guy here who could fix anything.”

“He’s retired. I took over,” said the woman as she held out her hand towards the man. “Let me see what it is.”

The man walked over and put a silver machine in her hand. It was smaller than a phone, with a tiny screen, and a click wheel in the middle. “Ah, an iPod Classic. Nice.”

The man looked confused. “Nice?”

The woman nodded. “Yeah. This is one of the ones with an actual hard drive. One-sixty gigs. It can hold between twenty and forty thousand songs.” She turned it over in her hand. “No internet, no bluetooth. Just the machine’s disk drive playing all the songs.” She looked at the man. “And, no speakers, so you need a speaker that has a headphone jack, or wired headphones to listen to the music.”

“Wow,” said the man, sounding very underwhelmed. “Why would anyone use something like this?”

“They like it, I guess.” She looked at him. “Why do you want to get it fixed?”

He shrugged. “It’s my mom’s. She’s had it forever, and she likes it.. She says that some of the music she has on it isn’t available on streaming.” He shrugged his shoulders again. “She says she likes putting all her different music on shuffle, and never knowing what’s gonna come up next.” Another almost apologetic shrug. “It’s her jam.”

“What’s the matter with it?” asked the woman.

“I don’t know. She says that sometimes the songs skip and stutter.”

“She knows she can download all her songs onto her phone, right?”

Shrug. “Yeah, but she said something about this is the way she and my dad used to listen to their music. They’d hook it up to the auxiliary outlet in the car on road trips across the country.” He paused. “My dad’s sick. They’re going on one last road trip, and they want to listen to their music using the iPod.”

The woman nodded her head. She could relate. It was like the time she brought her Gram’s old VCR into this very shop. She ended up apprenticing with the old man, and he taught her how to fix all the old stuff, and bring a little bit of joy to the lives of the people who owned them. He retired, and she became the fixer.

She picked up a flat rectangular tool, and deftly popped the front off of the iPod. “Let’s see what we have here …”