Drive - A Memoir 77th Installment
Chapter
19
“This
summer is the most difficult ‘reign of terror’ Edith has ever
laid upon us: Twelve jobs in the work schedule every day!” Russ was
complaining again.
“Ain’t
it great?” I quipped.
“What!”
Russ growled angrily and slammed out the door.
I
followed, “We have a full time work agent, scheduler, secretary and
banker. She takes the calls, assigns us the work, takes our paychecks
and on top of all that…she feeds us! All we have to do is work our
butts off for sixteen hours a day. I like it. No responsibilities.”
“She
– takes – our – pay – checks!” Russ barked one word at a
time.
“And
why not? What do we have to do with money? Besides managing our
lives, Edith gives us food, clothing, boots and bullets.”
“Bah!”
Russ grumbled as he almost ran to the outdoor workshop under an old
cottonwood tree. There was our project, our dream vehicle. With our
homemade machine we hoped to drive it to get around and to work it
turning bales. Most of all we would push the limits of the Whiz–Gizzy
to spike our adrenalin levels to an all time high, and probably this
would be the machine we would die in! “What a beautiful machine,”
Russ whispered, suddenly in a better mood.
“Today!”
I shouted. “Smoke test!” We had a couple of hours till work and
chores required our attention. The Whiz–Gizzy was a totally
magnificent vehicle to us, a piece of junk to everybody else, and
absolutely illegal to the state officials. There was no front bumper;
the radiator was foremost with an open V–8 between the front
wheels. There was no muffler, as the exhaust pipes were cut off
eighteen inches from the exhaust manifold…the racket was going to
be wonderful. The only part of the original body was the firewall we
had left to hold the steering wheel and windshield. The seat was the
only original interior feature, and its back rest was even with the
rear tires. The very last thing was the rear axel mounted with our
inventive ‘half–leaf springs’ and traction bars. The overall
reincarnation was so short it was nearly square in appearance.
“Eureka! It’s done; let’s start it!” I hollered.
“Gas
tank?” was Russ’s quiet reply.
“Oh
boy, we I guess we need one of those don’t we?” I said a little
chagrined. “Where is the one we tore off this thing when it was a
car?”
We
spent the next hour looking for, cleaning out, finding tubes and
connectors, and then spending quite some time figuring out where and
how to connect it. “Okay, gas tank tightly strapped behind the
seat, the tank is half full and hooked up. Let’s start it.” I
suggested a little less confidently this time.
“Let’s
see, we’ve put antifreeze in the radiator, oil in the engine, water
in the battery, gas in the tank,
500 more words tomorrow
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