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Jeff Cobb's mind works in uncommon ways.
He can remember a customer's first name after a brief meeting, the type of car they drive, as well as the kind of repair it needs and will probably need in the near future.
His mind is a warehouse of auto mechanic knowledge and trivia, filled to capacity with facts about motors and creative ways of modifying and fixing them.
An example: The telephone rings and a mechanic from another shop--no name so as not to embarrass--asks a troubleshooter's question concerning a customer's car. Hardly a moment passes before Cobb, who owns and operates Jeff Cobb Auto Works on South Acadian, mumbles over the line a quick series of suggestions. A few short words describing a general problem is enough to trigger Cobb's brain, a car computer, for a diagnosis and a solution.
That knack of understanding might for most folks be merely a handy skill to apply to a traditionally blue-collar trade. For Cobb, a gift for things mechanical has blossomed into a booming business. It has also taken a young man who found college uninspiring and turned him into an entrepreneur with a repair shop bearing his name and a manager with six employees under his watch.
Despite the business success, Cobb still considers himself--and operates as--an expert grease monkey. So many millions of little gadgets and pieces that in one way or another fit on an engine to make it crank, so many parts, all stashed around his office and in small caverns branching off in all directions, so many valves and rods and belts and gears and plugs, all mind-boggling in their apparent sameness, yet ever-so-subtle difference in gauge and size; all this he can retrieve from memory without difficulty.
That is what makes one fact so amazing: He can't remember the first car he ever worked on.
The 'Car du Jour'
In fact, it doesn't seem terribly relevant to him.
About the only thing he can remember about such mechanical matters is that from age zero he was the kind of kid who tinkered with objects, disassembled toys, clocks, whatever gadgets happened to be laying around to see what made them tick.
Such an aptitude has served him well. After 11 years of...