In rural places, one repair person often handles whatever breaks rather than specializing in a single trade. This kind of worker is a bricoleur, someone who improvises solutions from whatever is at hand instead of following one fixed method.
The personal know-how a craftsperson brings to a job is the essential human factor in work. It is disappearing from modern life, so documenting both what such a worker does and how they do it preserves something rare.
In a small community, people already know who keeps aging machines running. A newcomer with an old car is told almost at once that they will be meeting the local mechanic, as if depending on him were part of settling in.