Religious Life

Southland Times, Issue 24574, 24 October 1941, Page 7

Religious Life

By

ICHTHUS

Spare Parts

Yesterday I walked with the ghost of Charles Dickens. And what an hour we had together. I did not find “The Old Curiosity Shop,” but certainly I found the new one. There it stood, the unquestionable “old curiosity shop” of the new motor age—a motor- wrecking establishment. Everywhere were platforms, benches, shelves, recesses, compartments packed full of spare parts from old dismantled motors, all sorted out and marked with the make of car to which the part's belonged. I stood fascinated, thinking of the cars of which formerly they were a part, the journeys they had made, the places they had been in, the scenes they had looked on, and the men and women who had driven them. It was then that I felt a light touch on my arm, and there beside me stood the shade of Charles Dickens. I was not surprised, in fact, I almost expected it to happen. Anything might happen in such a place. “Ah!” he said, “if I had lived in your day what a book I could have written about all this”—and he waved a shadowy arm around: “my old curiosity shop was child’s play to this.” A neighbour had asked me to get from the motor wrecking people a spare part for the carburretor of an ancient motor engine of a model now nearly 20 years old. Did I get it? Of course I did. The man went off among his heaps and piles of spare parts, I heard the clink of metal being turned over, and in less than three minutes he was back, and in his hand was the very part I wanted, quite serviceable and just as good as new. The price was 3/-. I gasped. Here was old romance, but clad in the oil-stained overalls of the modern machine age, a very genius of efficiency, service and economy. As I turned to leave the place, with the spare part in my hand, again I felt that light touch. “Good-bye,” said the shade of Dickens. “Wonderful, isn’t it? I must tell old Scrooge about this. And I must bring Little Nell and Bob Crachit and Tiny Tim down here to see it.” “Good,” I said; “bring Sam Weller, too, and let him see our coaches without horses; and, I say. wouldn’t Mr Pickwick enjoy himself here for an hour!” With that he was gone, and I went my way. But the motor wrecking shop has been with me ever since. Here are some of the thoughts it has left with me. SAVED FROM THE WRECK I am still marvelling at how much there is that can be saved from the oldest derelict and from the most thoroughly smashed-up wreck. An old car with the hood rotted away, windows gone, the tyres perished off the wheel rims, and looking fit only for the junk heap, will yield engine parts, roller bearings and ball races, springs, shackles, rods, axles, caps, nuts and bolts, and a thousand other parts, which are well worth saving, and can be given a new setting and sent off on a new career of usefulness. Indeed, one of these parts salvaged from the wreck and the junk heap may someday keep another car on the roads for years. Not a day nor an hour passes but someone is needing some spare part that the motor wrecker has saved from destruction. But why do they call themselves “wreckers”? They are not wreckers. They are builders. Indeed, it is not too much to take a very noble and even sacred word, and call them saviours. True, they break up an old or a smashed-up car, but only that they may save out of the wreckage what is too valuable and serviceable to be thrown away. They will find, a place for it in the world, and a service that it can render. Such work is not negative and destructive at all. It is constructive and creative. Yes; they are builders, . saviours, creators, these wrecking people. “After this,” I said to myself, “if ever I meet a man or a woman whose health, or business affairs, or something else that affects them closely, has suffered a smash, I will say to them: ‘Yes, it is hard. But it is too early to despair. Do not think too much of what is gone. And never allow yourself to say that all is gone. Think how much there is that can still be saved. All is not lost. Out of the wreckage you can take this, and that, and give them a new setting, and set them off on a new career of useful and needed service.’ And when I meet a man who tells me he is getting old and is of no more use to himself or to others, I shall say: ‘Nonsense! What you want is to go down and see what the motor wrecking people are doing. You may not be as good as you were, and you may not be able to go on as you once did. But there is stilt a world of wealth left in the old machine. Find it and get hold of it, and put it to fresh service.’ ” That is the gospel of salvage which I learned at the motor wreckers, and I have come to see that what can be done with machines can be done also with human lives. Why, there is no smash so bad, and nothing so old and worn, that something valuable and serviceable may not be saved.

“SOME DAY, SOMEONE WILL NEED THIS” That is what the motor wrecker says within himself. He takes a machine to pieces and discards ruthlessly all that is useless. There is no sentiment about it. But every part that is in good order he puts aside. It is still useful, capable of good service. “Some day, someone will need this,” he says, and he puts it aside, and holds it in readiness for the day and the hour. His store is packed with piles and heaps of useful, serviceable used parts that are capable of a new career. And his business is based on the certainty that their day will come. My neighbour assembled his old engine and the machinery it was to drive. Very useful it was going to be, too, on the farm. But when he tested it, it failed because one vital part was done. But there was available at the motor wreckers the very part he needed. Today his engine is running and his machinery is humming and the work is being done because that used part was not 0 thrown away. The knowledge that we are of use is one of the main springs of human courage and human endeavour. It is one of life’s incentives. The motor wreckers left me strong on the gospel of usefulness. I feel that I want to tell every man and woman who are saying to themselves that their day is done, that it is not true: that there is a place for them, a useful work they can do, a vital gap they can stop. Was there not an airman named Bader, who lost both legs. He might have given up, and said: “I am done. My life is finished. I am a useless wreck and a burden.” Not he. He got artificial legs and feet fitted. He stuck to aviation. And he became a squadron leader, one of Britain’s real heroes of the air, and played a vital part in the defence of his country. It was finding that he was still useful and needed that saved him. We can all do with a bottle of that medicine. That, too, came home hard at the motor wreckers. HARD BY STOOD A CHURCH As I came away I noticed a strange ■ juxtaposition. Two motor wrecking . places face one another across the . street. Next door to the one, and j exactly opposite the other, stands a ' well-known church! Strange neighhours, was my first thought. Then I . saw that it was not strange at all, but j rather strikingly appropriate. Are not all three doing the same work of salvage, the former in machines, the latter in human lives? Is not the gospel of

all three the gospel of possible redemption and of new life? All three alike are busy collecting from the wreckages and the breakdowns of life what is valuable, for which there is still a place and a use, and giving it a new setting, and sending it off on a new career of adventure, achievement and service. I wanted to take off my hat and cheer them on. “We save what is of worth and give it a new life,” might be the motto of them all.