Decades ago, in the dim mists of time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and you could still buy cars with carburetors, a young woman moved in with a young man. Now this is hardly unusual, except that the young woman was brilliant and educated and the young man was rebuilding a VW engine in the kitchen.
Rewind a couple of years earlier. When the young man was just 19, his father helped him buy a 1970 VW Bug Convertible with a new top and a non-functioning engine. The dad loaned the young man the tools and gave him the book and told him that as soon as he pulled the engine out of the wrecked VW Bug in the front yard and put it in the convertible, that would be his car.
A note on Santa Fe in the '70s and '80: It was common for families, even in the "Historical Styles Zone" around downtown and Canyon Road, to have a parts car or two. I knew one person who had a pristine Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a Mercedes 190 SL "Pagoda" (already worth more than it was worth in the '70s), and a parts car for each in his front yard.
A note on the book: How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, a Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot is the best example of technical writing I have ever encountered. It took bewildered hippies by hand and taught them how to care for and even rebuild their VW Bugs and Busses without freaking out in the process. It taught me how to be a mechanic, which is part of how I paid for college!
By the time the young couple met, the young man had a functioning convertible and a spare VW engine badly in need of a rebuild. As they fell in love, they looked for an apartment together. They found one in the neighborhood known as the Student Ghetto with a large kitchen and lots of light. They bought a formica and vinyl and chrome dinette set from Sally Ann and the young man put the VW engine on a heavy painter's tarp on a wheeled cart which he kept under the dinette set. When he would have time in the evenings, he would roll it out to the middle of the kitchen floor, fold open the tarp, and work on rebuilding the engine. Even with the book, it took him months.
Eventually, the couple married and moved to California. The young man sold the rebuilt engine to a local VW mechanic for a handy profit, which helped with moving expenses!
The young man in the story was me, and the young lady is still my wife. We've been married almost four decades now. I no longer rebuild engines (or keep boa constrictors--another whole set of stories) in the kitchen. However, there are days we still feel the magic we once felt sitting at our $15 dinette set staring into each other's eyes while resting our feet on an unfinished VW engine.
Another convertible project car form much later in our lives together—this time in the garage!
