Read "The Prodigal Parents" by Sinclair Lewis online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
As an apprentice mechanic at the Triumph Agency, Howard was popular. For a couple of days he sulked at grease and overalls, the time clock and an aching back, but he discovered that the workmen were as individual as the pedigreed young gentlemen he had known in college, and more vigorous in humour. Their stories of jobs and girls and drunks, of the navy, the Pacific Coast, Detroit, seemed to him better than the giggling of young collegians, and it became important to him to be one of the boys.
He learned that nobody will find it out--at least not till the rear-end burns out, months later--if you save your energy by squirting only a quarter enough grease into the differential. He learned to get something very like a nap, after lunch and a couple of Bourbons, by lying under a car and in a friendly manner tapping the springs with a hammer now and then. And the chief mechanic was indulgent when the Son of the Boss got a group about him and taught them 'Three Cheers for Old TruxON'.