Thursday, May 08, 2025

the Autopian.com comes up with some good stuff, consistantly... and today? got me laughing about a smoking jacket and the word "punctum"


Somehow they caught onto this 1971 service manual, and realized the illustrator made the mechanic a guy in a smoking jacket. With a tie. 

No one dressed like that has ever reached into the engine bay of a 71 Chevy van
 

https://www.theautopian.com/chevy-once-thought-a-smoking-jacket-was-a-great-thing-to-wear-while-fixing-your-van/

4 comments:

  1. Not a smoking jacket, but a service coat, it serves the same purpose: to protect the wearer's clothes. Years ago I worked at a dealership where the shop foreman wore a shop coat (just like my instructors did in trade school). His job consisted of diagnosis and then he handed off the dirty work to us line mechanics so his white coat generally stayed clean-ish all day. Which was good since he also had the job of explaining technical details that the service writer didn't understand to customers. We can't let the customers see the grease stained shop employees that actually make the sausage. That was where I learned that the customer-facing service writer wasn't expected to know anything about cars but was only expected to sell more service.

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    1. thank you Joe! I figured, like you say, it's a service coat/lab coat and exactly as you point out, but the Autopian guys mhad a little fun with it, and hey, it's easier to share that fun with my readers than for me to cut it down. They made me laugh, I hoped to make some readers laugh, and who knows, maybe see if any of my readers ever have seen the word "punctum" used in print before, outside of a dictionary

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  2. i was unable to find the use of the word "Punctum" in the writings. i was hoping to have a good laugh. Punctum is related to the word "point" and is commonly used to describe a small nodular portion of skin. Punctum in an engine?

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    1. "That smoking jacket, though, that’s the punctum here." is what they wrote, and the online definition: punc·tum
      /ˈpəNG(k)təm/
      nountechnical
      a small, distinct point.

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