When I was in the ninth grade a friends Father died. In the course of the family cleaning out some of the gentleman's things they gave me several boxes of popular science magazines that dated from right after WWII until that time, 1964.

In that publication was a monthly story about a fictional small town garage. In these stories there always seemed to be some obscure problem to troubleshoot. There was an old salt mechanic, Gus, and his understudy Stan. Gus often used the Socratic method to guide Stan through the troubleshooting process. These stories were nothing short of excellent.

In the course of a move when I was a junior in high school, I threw out all the magazines. We have been cleaning out my Mom's house getting it ready to sell and found an old Popular Science magazine. When driving home I was telling my wife about the old articles about Gus which led to me googling it up when we got home.

I learned that the series started in 1925 and went through the mid sixties. The website makes ALL of these articles available. If you're a real troubleshooting, wrench in hand car guy, I think that you will enjoy the stories.