Dr. Good Wrench
Drives History Home
THERE'S NO
ENGINE hoist or massive rolling tool chest where Kevin Borg teaches.
He doesn't wear coveralls to class. But when Borg describes the workings
of an internal combustion engine, his students listen.
Their teacher,
after all, isn't merely conveying book knowledge; he's telling them
about the workings of a piece of technology he knows inside and out.
Borg is a self-described former "grease monkey," who traveled a very
atypical path to his current role as a professor in JMU's department
of history, where he teaches a slice-of-life course, The Automobile
in American Life.
"I grew up
in the automobile culture," Borg says of his upbringing in San Bernardino,
Calif., (a stop on the famed Route 66). Borg's father and uncle owned
a tire store in Southern California's hotbed of small racetracks; and
to help promote the business, and for fun and adventure, the elder Borg
raced at the local Orange Show Speedway.
"I remember
the race car being in the shop, and that was really cool," Borg says.
His interest in cars on and off the track led him to vocational training
in auto repair during high school.
"I graduated
a semester early from high school," Borg says, "largely because I'd
taken so much auto shop and welding and metal shop, without college
credit or AP courses."
A couple years
into the auto repair trade, Borg knew he needed more education. "As
we approached the '80s and the computerization and packaging under the
hood became tighter, it became more difficult for me, with a mechanical
background, to understand the computerized end," he says. I just didn't
get that spaghetti of vacuum hoses that an '80s car had.
"That's when
I started going to night school at community college to be a better
mechanic. That was my first intention. Then I discovered, 'I can do
math better; I can do English class. Maybe I'll do something else.'
And, so it evolved. A couple years after high school, I was tired of
coming home with grease up to my elbows."
After transferring
to the University of California at Riverside, Borg earned a bachelor's
degree in history. From there it was on to the University of Delaware
for master's and doctoral study and to Washington, D.C., as a Smithsonian
fellow at the National Museum of American History.
Borg's dissertation,
"From the Village Blacksmith to Mr. Good Wrench: Creating Auto Mechanics
in Technology's Middle Ground," is part of the inspiration for his auto
course, which chronicles the auto's advance across America and examines
its impact in the American way of life.
"The automobile
has been an epoch-defining technology for the 20th century," Borg says.
"It started as a plaything for the rich, and it's become the most ubiquitous
piece of technology in America. Few people can get along without one,
and the degree to which Americans have used the automobile to shape
their lives, culture and physical environment is stunning."
Americans
have shaped their communities and their houses around the automobile.
"The process of suburbanization is largely dependent upon the automobile,"
Borg says. "It started with trolley cars, but you can only get so much
of a cluster around the trolleys. The automobile just obliterates space."
People free
to travel more extensively needed a place to keep their autos when not
on the road. House architecture changed: the garage began as a detached
building by the alley, in keeping with horse-and-carriage customs, then,
for convenience, crept closer to the house until finally it became part
of the dwelling. Autos have also played a part in Americans' leisure
lives. Auto touring and camping were early diversions as auto-makers
offered tents and add-ons to make cars more comfortable in the field.
Auto sport grew from cross-continent rallies to modern auto racing.
Manufacturers
involved in racing hope consumers will buy their cars for the streets.
"It started with Al Sloan and General Motors in the '20s," Borg says.
"Henry Ford had locked up the market with the Model T -- 'any color
you want as long as it's black.' And it was cheap so he could sell to
the masses, but people grew weary of the same Tin Lizzy."
Sloan began
to offer choices in paint color, chrome, interiors and progressively
more expensive makes. "Therein the message: You don't always want a
Model T in black," says Borg. "The whole idea of styling, status, advertising
begins the association that your automobile is you."
What does
the mechanic turned professor drive? "Ones I can afford and fix, a Toyota
pickup and a Ford Taurus."
Janet L. Smith ('81)
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