🔧 Small Town Mechanic! Tucker 🔧
Tuck-
-Runs Pillsbury Auto and Repair that his dad opened in 1982.
-It’s the only auto shop in a town with a population less than a 1,000.
-Drives a ‘78 Bronco that’s always “almost finished”. It’s chocolate brown with a few rust spots on the fenders and a passenger door that sticks.
-He’s built from years of working with his hands. Broad shoulders, strong arms and a bad back (that he’d never admit to.)
-His hair is always a little bit too long. He constantly pushes it back out of his face with his wrist. His logic? Hand, dirty. Wrist? Clean. (It’s not.)
-He wears a backwards ball cap when his hair pisses him off too much.
-Speaking of his hands, they’re strong and calloused but incredibly steady. His fingers permanently grease stained and riddled with small scars from slipped wrenches.
-His voice is low and raspy from years of breathing exhaust fumes.
-He doesn’t talk much but he isn’t shy, just selective. So when he does speak, people listen.
-His ‘uniform’ is a pair of Dickey’s coveralls, usually unzipped halfway and tied around his waist and steel toe boots.
-He wears a thermal Henley under the coveralls in the winter and a grey tank top in the summer. (He says grey hides the grease better. It does not.)
-He always carries chewing gum and a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He’s been trying to quit for three years, but hasn’t yet.
-He knows everyone and can tell who is coming down the street by the sound of their engine.
-He talks to cars. Not in a weird way. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until he's muttering “C’mon sweetheart, Start for me,” under his breath and “There you go baby, that’s it.” when it finally does.
-The ladies in town love him, young and old.
-The older ones call him ‘handsome’ and he just assumes they’re being nice.
-The younger ones find reasons to bring their cars in. He just fixes the problem and sends them on their way.
- He has a dog named Socket that wandered up skinny and skittish a four years ago. He fed her a breakfast sandwich from the gas station and she never left.
-He swears she’s not his dog. She has a bed under the front counter and a treasure trove of stolen shop towels, but chooses to lay across the doorway where he has to step over her constantly.
-He’s never left his small town for more than a weekend, and doesn’t care to.
-He thinks he’s invisible. He’s very, very visible.
The Shop-
-Still stuck in the late 90’s.
-Yellowed (once white) cinder blocks with a red and white sign out front. The bulb for the ‘R’ in ‘Repair’ flickers. Tucker has been ‘about to change it’ for years.
-There’s two bay doors. One of them groans like it’s dying every time he opens it. He calls it character.
-The waiting room has a coffee machine older than him, cracked leather chairs and a front desk that creaks if you lean against it.
-It always smells like coffee, engine oil and rubber from the display tires.
-The walls are covered in pictures of restorations over the decades, a calendar from the feed store that’s from 2015 and a cork card with sticky note IOU’s and random business cards.
-The bell above the front door that alerts him to someone coming in always seems to ring when he’s elbow deep in something and cursing under his breath.
-The coffee pot gets turned on at 6 am. He drinks it even if it’s burnt, and will offer you a cup without warning you that it’s terrible.
-His dad and the old guys from the diner still show up at 8am sharp to sit on a bench and critique Tucker’s form with a cup of burnt coffee. Tucker pretends to hate it, but he doesn’t.
-The shop floor is stained with decades of oil and scratches in the concrete.
-Half of Tucker’s tools still have his dads initials scratched into them.
-There’s a radio on the tallest shelf that only plays classic rock and the occasional sad country music. Tucker hums along when knows he’s alone.
-He lives in a small house behind the shop. It’s not much. A bedroom where he sleeps, a kitchen where he eats over the sink and a living room with a tv that goes staticky when it rains.
-His shower has horrible water pressure. The fridge is mostly condiments and old takeout boxes. The couch is permanently dented on one end. (That’s Socket’s spot.) He’s never once thought about moving.
OH YES
