LEDGER COLUMNIST

Tim GULLA LEDGER STAFF WRITER I was taught from an early age the world was too full of hate and that hate was too strong and mean-spirited of a word to ever bring up in conversation.

Even if said flippantly, or with no ill-intent, using this four-letter word was treated no differently in my household than other words with the same number of letters.

On Wednesday evening, however, sitting in the parking lot of The Gaffney Ledger, I found myself muttering "I hate Norm Abram."

I really don't have any problems with the bearded and bespectacled wonder of wood. For those of you who don't watch Public Television, he's the master carpenter on "This Old House" and "The New Yankee Workshop" who could likely fashion a personal computer out of some bits of oak and a sheet of plywood.

While I'm sure the television shows are well-edited to cut out any mistakes or gaffs, I sincerely doubt Abram, unlike me, has ever violated the "measure twice, cut once" rule of woodworking.

No, my beef with Abram stemmed from pure jealousy.

If you watch his "New Yankee" show, you'll know there isn't a single tool in existence that Abram doesn't have at his disposal.

He can take pieces of wood from a high-tech table saw to joiner, then to his sanding planer and laser-guided radial arm saw, and then put all those bits and pieces together with a biscuit cutter and fancy dovetail jig and end up with something that belongs in a museum.

And should he want to do something really fancy, he's got drawers full of thousands upon thousands of dollars in router bits alone.

I was begrudging Abram because I was sitting in my car, trying to figure out how a single phillips screwdriver could possibly disassemble a car door that was put together with four different types of screws and bolts.

Leaving work Wednesday afternoon, I learned the electric window on my car no longer wished to cooperate by actually doing its job.

It wouldn't have been an issue if my window was stuck in the fully closed position. I can deal with air conditioning on a warm day.

No, my window was stuck in the completely open position, which is not a good thing from either a security or wet weather standpoint.

Option one, which was jiggling the window switch countless times, had no effect.

Option two just wasted gasoline. I took a spin on the bumpiest road I could find - believing that a few jars from potholes might magically cure a loose electrical connection. I likely knocked my car out of alignment but still had an open window.

Option three was to remove absolutely everything from my car and its trunk and tape a plastic garbage bag over the open window until professional help could be obtained.

Not willing to admit I need professional help, however, I decided to jump head-first into the process of disassembling the door panel to get to the root of the problem.

I wasn't sure what to look for, in all honesty, but that's the manly man's way of doing things.

Unfortunately, the only tool I had in my trunk was a tire iron and one of the few tools I could borrow from my office was a small but limited set of little screwdrivers.

Surveying the task ahead, the phillips screwdriver was fine for loosening the few visible screw heads I could see.

But soon I reached a point that the phillips just wasn't going to cut it.

Car manufacturers, it seems, dislike using the same kinds of fasteners and screws throughout the entire assembly process. It must make them feel magnanimous to provide full-time employment for the makers of odd screws.

For this project, I learned I would also need a special star-shaped screwdriver to get some of the additional screws out. One size doesn't always fit all when it comes to these kinds of screws and I actually needed two different sizes.

Norm Abram would have had them at his fingertips, I'm sure. And that's what led to the jealousy.

I really shouldn't be cross with Mr. Abram, though. He's a professional at what he does.

I'm pretending to be a jack of all trades, but really am a master of none.

Staring at a half-disassembled car door, but not really able to reach the inner workings I needed to fiddle with, I turned back to the one tool that everyone always has with them.

I gave the door a few good kicks with my foot. Ironically, it worked like a charm.

Take that Mr. Abram. But should he ever want to give some of his tools away, I'll be glad to accept.