Our skillful son Tony

If you have been reading my series of columns on how Mrs. K and I are dealing with the August floods that ravaged our home, you have read about our son, Tony. He is Donna’s son from a previous marriage, but I call him my son because that is the role he has taken on in my life.

It is Tony who came to our rescue when we needed a place to stay – driving his RV to our property. It is Tony who has contracted all the labor we have used and who has done much of the hands-on work himself.

Tony is a brilliant ace of all trades. He performs at a top and precise level in carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, car repair, designing and building, handyman work, appliance repair … anything and everything to do with hands on-problem solving.

Working under the banner of his company, Anew Look, he provides his customers with all the above, and has gained a reputation for his hard-working, honest and thoughtful services. He has been the engine to our recovery from the flooding disaster we have been through.

But Tony’s skills are not the only inspiring thing about the man. His path to his successes has been a rocky one at times, to say the least. His present state is a testament to his ultimate strength of character – a strength that was not always at the fore, but which had to be discovered and decided upon.

Tony was born the middle child of Mrs. K’s five children. As such, he strove for attention with silly antics, daredevil stunts, and a general look-at-me attitude. As he grew, he wasn’t immune to getting in trouble and causing his mom more than a few gray hairs as he tested life with minor crimes and eventual drug use. More serious problems followed and Tony found out what it was like to be incarcerated.

Eventually after several such episodes of loss of freedom and dangerous downward steps into drug use, Tony figured things out. He developed his faiths in God and in himself. He decided to take a different tack. The result was a 180-degree change in the direction of his path in life.

Somehow, Tony always has had the talent for understanding the mechanical arts. By observing others, as well as trial and error, he learned to do just about every hands-on skill you can think of. I call him a genius in his special abilities. I have never seen him at a loss when it comes to figuring out spatial problems or knowing about the workings of literally every kind of system.

One of my favorite Tony stories is about how a brother-in-law was having some trouble with the engine in his car, an Acura. No one could figure out the problem or how to resolve it. When Tony heard about it, he attacked the situation – first going into an auto parts store and finding a book with an exploded diagram of an Acura engine. He memorized the diagram. From that he disassembled the Acura engine in his sister’s driveway, laying all the parts out, found the problem, cleaned and fixed the troublesome part, then reassembled the engine. His sister’s husband said the car ran better than it ever had. Then he fixed his sister’s Lexus. Same results.

Nowadays, Tony is much in demand for a variety of services. He has been working hard every day on the recovery of our home, the same home he grew up in. From the very first post-flood days, his contractor’s network of workers, skilled and unskilled, have provided the repairs to our walls and floors, working at special rates for him, saving us money.

Tony is a man who has been at the bottom of life’s pile. I saw him there. He turned his life around because he saw that where he was heading was a dead end, emphasis on the dead. He had enough, and found that the escape hatch was in himself – he only had to turn the knob.

Tony’s story is an inspiring one and it is an ongoing tribute to his mother’s creed: “Never give up.” She never gave up on her middle son, and she has been rewarded.