Joe McAdory: Lessons learned from neighborhood geniuses

If it was broken, Mr. Thomas could fix it. He was a tall, balding man who eerily resembled Dwight Eisenhower, and his garage was like a tool shed on steroids — full of gadgets and doodads, small electronic parts, welding machinery and experimental projects.

We kids along Citrus Avenue in South Daytona, Fla., didn’t know Mr. Thomas’ first name. After all, it was proper to address adults by their surname. But many afternoons in the mid-1970s, we gathered inside Mr. Thomas’ gadget shop to learn about magnets, gravity, positive and negative charges and
electric fuses.

Sometimes Mrs. Thomas brought snacks and Kool-Aid. Our parents didn’t pay a dime, but their kids were getting free engineering lessons with food.

Mr. Thomas was retired … from what industry I’m not sure. He could have been a rocket scientist for all I know.

We didn’t have video games or a hundred channels of cable television to help pass the time, but it’s interesting how an 80-year-old man could captivate the minds of kids with nothing better to do than ride bicycles or have swordfights with palm branches. He didn’t have to get on to us. He talked. We listened. Try to get a kid to do that these days.

We respected his voice and we respected his property.

Except for the time I broke his window.

A stray foul ball sailed smack dab into the Thomases’ bedroom. It was a lesson in what happens when force meets glass.

From that day forward, we used tennis balls in our baseball games.

The centerpiece of our front yard was a palm tree, which couldn’t have stood much more than 10 feet when I was a kid. To our right was the Thomas home. To our left were the Moshers.

We never put a hole through Mr. Mosher’s window. If we hit a ball into his yard — he kept it.

Mr. Mosher was every bit the tool junkie Mr. Thomas was, though we didn’t sit in his garage for hours and study his expertise. The Michigan man who chose to retire in temperate Florida could make a Maserati out of a Moped. His ingenuity was amazing. Put Mr. Mosher and Mr. Thomas together and we could have declared our independence from foreign oil long ago.

When moles began making tracks through his front yard, Mr. Mosher didn’t call a pest company, or stand over their holes with a shotgun. Instead, he put his brain to work and developed his own deterrent system — one that created a network of lawn ornaments.

Night after night, Mr. Mosher’s garage light was on. You could see him inside working on his creations — miniature windmills made from aluminum cans.

You’d have twirling Pepsi cans over here, Coke over there, and maybe some Canada Dry in the backyard. He explained that the windmills created mild tremors in the ground and that kept the critters away.

Today, that palm tree towers over the house and yard, creating a shadow that crosses the street. How the years have passed.

Gone is Mr. Thomas. I’m sorry about the window.

Gone is Mr. Mosher. I wonder what he did with our tennis balls.

Joe McAdory is editorial page editor for the Opelika-Auburn News. He can be reached at 737-2549 or