Paul Bass Photo
First in line: Terry Barrett at American Muffler.
AAA flatbed tech Terry Barrett was behind AAA Pizza Wednesday watching someone else complete a task he has done himself thousands of times — replace brakes on a vehicle.
The vehicle in question was Barrett’s GMC Envoy. After almost five decades fixing cars, he decided he had had enough.
Barrett originally brought his Envoy to American Muffler & Brake, set back on Whalley Avenue behind Triple A Pizza, last Saturday. He had ordered new brakes from Detroit Axle through the mail, and asked his old friends at American Muffler to replace them.
Detroit Axle “sent the right rear parts. But they sent the wrong front parts,” Barrett said while watching the work being done, in a conversation on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. So Barrett re-ordered the correct front parts, and brought them to American Muffler.
The new -- correct -- parts, ready for installation.
Barrett wanted to beat the morning rush Wednesday. So he showed up to American Muffler at 7 a.m. — two hours before opening.
He was first on line. “I watched TV in my car” while waiting, he said. He saw two episodes of CBS’s FBI: International, one about “a guy who killed three prosecutors,” the other “about a fentanyl case.”
Barrett, 60, started repairing cars at 8 years old, when his father Richard — a mechanic — told him to fix a carburetor.
Dad didn’t tell him how to fix the carburetor. “He was from the era of ‘Do this.’ Your parents told you to do something. You figured it out.”
Young Terry did figure it out, after a couple of tries. He had learned by watching his father.
He decided he liked repairing cars. His father wasn’t pleased. “He didn’t want me to be a mechanic. He said go be a lawyer or a doctor.” Terry’s response: “I don’t want to be a lawyer or doctor! I’d rather work on cars.”
By the time Terry was an adult, dad had relented, and the two opened Richard’s Garage on Judson Avenue. Terry ran it for 30 years. Then he decided to close up and work for his friend at a Meineke shop.
Five years ago Barrett decided he was done fixing cars. He took the job driving a flatbed for AAA five days a week, ferrying broken-down vehicles to other people’s repair shops.
Wednesday was a day off, giving him time to bring the Envoy to American, whose crew he has been friends with since they did work together back in the Richard’s Garage days.
True, “it would be cheaper for me to do it myself, but it’s not about the money all the time,” he acknowledged. “And you have to be tooled up. I have a jack. But I let my friend use it. I’d have to go find him. I know they do this every day. So why not come here?”
Later Wednesday Barrett planned to change the alternator on his other vehicle, a 1986 Pontiac Trans Am that he bought in 1998. This job he would, in fact, do himself. “The car is in my yard. Plus it’s easy. I’m out of the game repairing other people’s cars. [But] I rebuilt the car myself.”
Click on the video to watch the conversation with Terry Barrett on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program.
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