I don't fix things.

I'm a man. I don't fix things.

I pay people to fix things, is what I do.

In general, the people I pay to fix things do not fix the thing on the first try.

Being unable to fix things on the first try doesn't hurt your fixing-things career, though.

Nearly everyone I've ever had to call back to fix the same thing twice has arrived in a $50,000 pickup truck.

Also, I've learned that the fixing-things trade is the true American melting pot. Every guy I hire to fix things is about 50 years old and white. He always shows up with a 25-year-old Hispanic helper who doesn't speak English very well.

"The problem with hiring Americans is drugs and alcohol," said one 50-year-old fixer as we chatted after the job was over and his helper was out in the truck.

He told me the same thing when he came back for the third time.

You can't get anyone to come to your house and fix your Weedwacker, so when mine stopped working, I had to enter the cave of the fixer, which meant I drove to a dilapidated shed where a white guy in his 50s fixes small engines. His $50,000 pickup truck was parked next to the shed.

"I don't mess around with the electric ones," he said.

This simple statement was intended to let me know that not only am I unable to fix things, but my ownership of an electric Weedwacker means I'm a girl. I got in the SUV I bought used for $16,000 and drove away.

The reason I don't fix things is my father didn't fix things. We were not the kind of father-son duo who spent time out in the garage fooling around with an old car. My parents bought their cars used, drove them until they stopped running, then had them towed to the kind of used car dealership with a sign out front that says, "BUY HERE. PAY HERE." Car salesmen looked at my parents the way the farmer looks at the cow; sometimes we were milked, and sometimes we were butchered.

As America tries to return to "traditional values," a movement led by many people who never experienced those values, guys like me are a target.

"You probably don't even know how to change a tire," the new traditionalist hoots at guys like me. "You don't even get your hands dirty."

I do know how to change a tire, even if it doesn't come up much, and I've offered to keep a bucket of dirt on my desk so I can plunge my hands into it on short breaks from writing.

After being dismissed by the small engine repair guy, I gritted my teeth like an 1875 Kansas homesteader.

"I'm going to try and fix the Weedwacker," I told my wife.

"Just buy a new one," she said. "They're not very expensive."

We have tools in the house. I know their names, too. Screwdrivers. Wrenches. A hammer. Pliers.

I'm semiretired. She went to work that Tuesday, and I went out in the garage, and I got the tools out, and I looked at the Weedwacker. I took a piece off that let me look into its guts.

There wasn't anything wrong with the electrical parts, which was good because all I know about electricity is that it can kill you. I spent nearly 40 years as a reporter. I've written stories about nearly every kind of death, including mishaps with heavy equipment, electrical deaths, guys who fell off trash trucks and construction guys who died when the trench caved in. This does not encourage me to experiment with things I don't really understand.

When I looked at the mechanical part of the Weedwacker, the part that actually wacks the weeds, I could see what was wrong. I fixed it with a screwdriver and a pair of needle-nosed pliers.

"I think I fixed the Weedwacker," I told my wife that night.

"Did you try it?" she asked.

"No," I told her. "I'm scared to. If I fixed it, it'll be the first time in my life I ever fixed anything. I gotta lot of ego tied up in that thing."

I took the Weedwacker out in the yard the next day. It started. It wacked weeds. I'd fixed it.

And I stood alone on the prairie.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com . Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

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