People often have a tennis ball dangling from a string so they know how far to pull their cars into the garage. At our house, we have a 4-cylinder turbo engine hanging from a come-along.

"I only need it up there long enough to get parts off," my 20-year-old son promised me when he pulled the engine from his 1991 Plymouth Laser shortly after arriving home from college this past summer.

He had just bought a 1991 Mitsubishi Eclipse, which has many common engine parts with the Laser, and he wanted to use them on the new car.

My son's been back at college for months now, but the engine still hangs from the rafters, and every time I pull my car into the garage, only a thin windshield separates me from hundreds of pounds of hanging metal.

Using car (or tractor) parts for purposes other than for what they were intended is a common practice in our house, and the most obvious example of this is the Rambler hubcaps "decorating" the front of our home.

Years ago, my husband, (who, by the way, sees nothing wrong with the hanging engine), nailed 19 hubcaps around the perimeter of the garage doors.

Our house is a dark brown color, and he decided, without consulting me, that the shiny metal hubcaps "would brighten up the front of the house."

"That's why people buy paint," I told him, but the hubcaps are still there.

He also uses a Rambler hubcap and its steel wheel, mounted to the garage wall, on which to wrap the garden hose. "It's cheaper than buying hose reel," he explained.

Using car parts creatively in the garage is one thing, but he's also brought his decorating ideas into the house.

In the office where I am writing this column is a Rambler hubcap with a clock mounted on its face, and the books on the shelf beside me are held in place with two pistons from a John Deere B tractor.

A magnet once used on a car's oil filter to draw metal from the engine holds up the office calendar-which, by the way, features photographs of 12 different Massey Ferguson tractors.

And when I told him we needed something to hang in a small narrow space next to the office door, he mounted a tiny John Deere garden tractor pulling a miniature wagon, onto the wall.

From one room to the next, there are examples of my husband's handiwork: A V8 emblem from the side panel of a Checker Cab hangs from the pull light in our pantry, an amber turn signal lens dangles from the pull string in the mud room; a shiny chrome Rambler grill sits on the mantel in the family room; and wrenches for a Model T and a Fordson tractor - along with an antique wooden saw handle and a screwdriver from a coffin company in Decatur, Ill., that turns only one way, tight - adorn a dining room wall.

Ironically, that tool arrangement is within eyeshot of a framed poster in the kitchen that my daughter gave me. It reads: "Martha Stewart doesn't live here."

That's for sure.