An inside glimpse into the garages, storage rooms, attics, or sheds of our executives at Freedom Consulting Group, the “In the Garage Series” searches around for the odd, interesting, and downright funny objects taking up residency in our leadership team’s homes.

Name: Scott Beall

Object: Red Toolbox

The Tale: In the corner of my garage is a red toolbox on wheels. It stands four feet tall, smells of oil and dust, and it contains not just tools, but also memories.

In 1984 when I was 20 years old, I was a (poor) Porsche fanatic. My 1975 Toyota Corolla was running just fine, but I saw a 1976 Porsche 914 sitting on my neighbor’s lawn. It was a beautiful, shiny, black two-seater with a targa top and four-cylinder mid-engine. It was fun to drive; never mind that the heat didn’t work or that I couldn’t drive it in the snow – it was a Porsche!

But, after giving up my reliable Toyota, I quickly realized that my Porsche needed more than gasoline; it needed a lot of work. Moreover, the standard approach of taking the car to a dealership or garage wasn’t going to work for a poor college kid. I had to fix this car myself.

So I bought a Porsche mechanics manual and one by one, I started buying tools.  Each tool in my red toolbox represents sweat, scarred oily fingers, and many long nights and weekends sitting under my Porsche. Looking through each drawer in my toolbox brings back memories and the long hours spent with that Porsche.

In it you’ll still find my airflow adjustment tool that I used to balance my carburetors (which I had to carry with me), the pickle fork I used when my ball joint snapped on the Beltway, the various odd-sized hex and star wrenches that were used to remove engine parts, special tools I had to use to adjust my cable clutch (which, by the way, was like lifting weights), and an old screwdriver, which acted as a chisel and pry bar.

Time has gone on and I sold the old 1976 Porsche years ago (it has since been replaced with a new Audi), but I still have my red toolbox and the memories that come with it.

And maybe one day in the future, I’ll reunite my tools with another old Porsche.