Tom (left) and Ray (right) Magliozzi
I admit to only have listening to a few Car Talk segments and that’s only in the last year. I was entertained, puzzled and above all else understanding fairly quickly what made the show so likable. The hosts seemed like they genuinely loved what they were doing and they were helping people constantly. It seemed like such a lovely thing to behold: people loving what they do and doing that thing to help others and make their lives easier.
So even though I wasn’t overly familiar with Car Talk I was still sad and bothered when I heard Tom Magilozzi had passed away and reading that article you can see how much he meant to people and why he meant so much. Car Talk saves so many people time, energy and above all else the money. Money that they could spend (hopefully) more wisely and on themselves rather than hiring professionals.
One of the things a friend of mine linked seemed to suggest that Magilozzi wasn’t a huge fan of work, to put it mildly:
Tom was the first in his family to attend college. He got a degree in chemical engineering, but he was never that enthralled by work, particularly the 9-to-5 world.
“He actually hated working in any world,” Ray said in an NPR blog post. “Later on, when we were doing Car Talk, he would come in late and leave early. We used to warn him that if he left work any earlier, he’d pass himself coming in.”
Tom once described his own attitude to his listeners: “Don’t be afraid of work. Make work afraid of you. I did such a fabulous job of making work afraid of me that it has avoided me my whole life so far.”
Before Car Talk, he “worked” as a Harvard Square bum, a house painter, an inventor and an auto mechanic. But Car Talk allowed him to do what he loved most, Ray said: “Making friends, philosophizing, thinking out loud, solving people’s problems and laughing his butt off.”
My friend also added from another link:
After getting out of college, Tom Magliozzi went to work as an engineer. One day he had a kind of epiphany, he told graduates when he and Ray gave the 1999 commencement address at their alma mater.
He was on his way to work when he had a near-fatal accident with a tractor-trailer. He pulled off the road and decided to do something different with his life.
“I quit my job,” he said. “I became a bum. I spent two years sitting in Harvard Square drinking coffee. I invented the concept of the do-it-yourself auto repair shop, and I met my lovely wife.”
Well, he wasn’t exactly a bum; he worked as a consultant and college professor, eventually getting a doctoral degree in marketing. And Tom and Ray Magliozzi did open that do-it-yourself repair shop in the early ’70s. They called it Hackers Haven.
So here’s to Car Talk, to making people’s lives easier, to encouraging DIY and to making work afraid of us.
RIP Tom Magilozzi.
