Drive - A Memoir 58th Installment
one;
plenty of shade, huge branches to connect the block and tackle for
lifting heavy parts, and dense leaves to keep off a little bit of the
rain. Actually in summer in the high mountain desert, an outdoor shop
is okay because it never rains in the summer. Well almost never.
“Well…,”
Russ started.
“Why
don’t you shut up?” I said still peeved that he’d told me to
shut up. “I’ll tell him, because you told the jackrabbit story.”
“We’re
tired of driving the tractor around at 25 miles per hour. It takes us
twelve minutes to get to Camas Creek to go fishing and ten minutes to
get to the store. We need a better ride. Because of our superior
intellect, mechanical abilities and the fact that the Old Man taught
us how to weld, we’ve decided to build us a car, but not just any
car – a Whiz Gizzy motor vehicle. We knew about this wrecked ’56
Ford Crown Vic coupe with 292 cubic inch V–8, 4–speed manual,
synchromesh and overdrive. It was Tommy’s car, parked by the ’46
Plymouth beater that Tommy was going to give to his boys, Neil and
Don. Tommy had a homestead farm a couple miles from ours, but made a
living at the Sheep Experiment Station above Dubois. The Crown Vic
been in a rollover accident, Tommy told us, that happened on a
mountain road when the road gave way, turning the car over into a
gulch. Anyway, we had Tommy help tow it here. We took off the doors,
cut through the roof just behind the windshield, took off the body,
tossed the body by the fence, which Bowser is using for his doghouse.
This, what you will see is what is left of a car, an engine and the
front wheels on a short portion of the frame.”
“And,
I ask again, what is a Whiz Gizzy?” Pete said, apparently wanting
to piss me off.
“Okay,
our plan is to take off everything so only the drive train, frame and
front seat remains. We’re going to shorten the frame until the back
wheels are right by the seat back.”
“How
you going to do that?” Petey, was full of silly questions.
“That’s
it. Time for you to go home,” I commanded, visibly irritated. I
didn’t like Pete a whole lot anyway. I thought he was a wimp –
but a wimp with a cool pronghorn.
“Yeah,
I do have to go,” Pete jogged off, with the pronghorn following
behind him. When he got down the lane a piece, he turned and yelled,
“I’ll go to work for Corky. Thanks for helping me decide.”
“Yes,
go,” I muttered. “Your kind of tag along, questioning and ‘hey,
look at me’ personality isn’t needed around here.”
“Let’s
milk the cows, and maybe there’ll be enough daylight left to cut
the car’s frame,” Russ suggested, shutting me up at last.
500 more words tomorrow
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