Derek Neary
Northern News Services

FORT SIMPSON (Jan 29/99) - When your blinker doesn't blink, your wipers don't wipe, your horn doesn't honk or your vehicle just simply won't start, Fort Simpson's Darryl Sloat and Eugene Villeneuve are likely candidates to go in search of the problem.

The two mechanics work for rival garages, but it's a friendly rivalry.

"There's enough business to go around," said Sloat of D.J. Automotive.

A mechanic since 1980 and working in Fort Simpson since 1994, he recalls the days when he and his friends tinkered with his first car, a '72 Dodge Duster that he acquired for a measly $75. Cars have changed substantially since those days, said Sloat, whose father was an autobody mechanic and whose grandfather was a heavy-duty mechanic. Now most backyard mechanics can still change the oil, air filter and sparkplugs, but that's usually about the extent of it.

"Now with all the electronics, it's a guessing game if you were to do it in your backyard," said Sloat, who recently acquired a $1,000-scanner to do diagnostic tests on the increasingly complex newer model vehicles.

Working in Fort Simpson involves a couple of minor obstacles, primarily finding parts.

"To get your parts you just can't walk across the street," he explained. "You have to wait for the next truck to come in."

Trucks arrive every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Alternately, sometimes he'll know of somebody coming from Hay River, where most of the parts are ordered, who can pick something up. In emergencies, parts can be brought in by air freight.

For that reason, P.R. Contracting stocks a wide variety of windshields, and last Friday, Villeneuve was busy installing a new one. Windshields, changing tires and doing oil changes make up a good portion of the work performed by the second-year mechanic.

"I learned from the boss (Pat Rowe)," Villeneuve said. "I like working for Pat. If you treat him right, he treats you right."

Part of the daily grind as a mechanic is dealing with the loud power tools and the greasy environment. Not only do Villeneuve's hands endure daily nicks, scratches and cuts from the unforgiving metal, he inevitably finds them blackened by day's end.

"It comes with the territory," he said, recalling the time when he first worked with urethane and got it all over his hands. It took him two weeks to get it off.