First he wanted me to see how good a mechanic he was. Without any formal training, he was a wizard. He showed me the broken carburetor on his outboard motor, and pointed out how he had carved a fish bone to make a replacement actuator that functioned as well as the original actuator did before it broke. The actuator was part of the carburetor's choke linkage. Eugene asked me outright if I would "be his friend." I said "yes," and we were off across the lake to look at a piece of steel hammered into a rock by a wayward native blacksmith who tricked the Devil into an early showdown with the church.