Beside Thomas stood his seven-year-old son, Benjamin, wearing a small pair of denim overalls and clean leather work gloves, carefully holding a clean cotton rag in his small hands.
"Look at the valve lifter adjustment on the rear cylinder, Dad," Thomas smiled, pointing a brass feeler gauge toward the engine casing. "Zero point zero zero eight inches. Exactly like Grandfather wrote in the nineteen-fifty-four logbook."
"Your grandfather was an ordnance master, Thomas," I chuckled, taking a slow sip of black coffee from my ceramic mug. "He didn't believe in guessing. He believed in measuring twice and tightening once."
Advertisement
Little Benjamin stepped forward, reaching out with his small gloved hand, gently rubbing a speck of dust from the white star on the olive-drab fuel tank.
"Grandpa Harold?" Benjamin asked, his young voice ringing clear as a mountain bell through the quiet workshop.
"Yes, Ben?"
"Are we going to start the engine today?"
