It is perhaps the ugliest one-ton van I have ever seen. And it is mine—for the time being. Most of the people that responded to my ad were “bio-heads”: those who saw the van’s diesel engine as a step toward sustainable biological energy. They want to convert it to run on the goo that collects behind restaurants. The newbies who want to get on the vegetable train (turnip truck?) tend not to know the difference between a piston and the radio tuner. But, there have been many of these people who have wrought from the barest of mechanical knowledge a reliable mode of transport that’s under the influence of plant oil.
Generalizations are easy. It is also easy to classify into some sort of social stratification the people who come to see the van. Implying that one sort is above the other.
A pair of guys in camo vests and hats emerged from their car like they were taking off tight sweaters. These guys defiantly beat anorexia, if they had ever had it in the first place. Somehow, they didn’t strike me as sustainability-oriented, so I doubted that their main interest in my van was to get into vegetable oil fuel. Now, I have lived among people who look like this, and I speak their language. This day I was dressed in grubbies and had dirty hands from resurrecting the truck, so I looked like their kind of people. To put the glove on the other foot, they were expecting what they disparaging referred to as “Someone from Corvallis.” They were men who worked with their hands, who liked to hunt, drink beer, chew tobacco, and think Palin was a good idea. Good for them. I liked them.
They wanted the engine for their tow truck—which would run on good old-fashioned dirty diesel, thank you very much. We shared stories about mechanical mayhem. When one of them took off in the van for a long test drive, I got to talkin’ with the other. He was going on about how his neighbor called the police because his trailer was parked a foot onto the sidewalk and how he had the pleasure of calling the cops when that same neighbor parked his RV in the street for more than a few days. I was, once again, very grateful to have the neighbors we have.
My wife describes our house as the one bringing down the property values in the neighborhood. That is the luck/bane of living in a “nice” neighborhood. When money is reliably passing from one wallet to the next, we fit in quite nicely with those around us. And then there is now.
Our house has seen better days. At 30 years old, there is a lot to do. When I see the neighbors’ procession of trades peoples’ vans doing everything from refinishing hard wood floors to cleaning out the heater ducts, I send up silent gratitude that these are skills I have. I can fix almost anything, though I lack the time. Our “Curb Appeal” suffers when I have to work on our cars in the driveway, rather than paying someone else to do it—in their garage. Or when we have to put off painting the house—again.
Fortunately, we are surrounded by good people whose friendship and tolerance would make it hard to sell the house and move somewhere else in Corvallis—not that our neighborhood has the only cool people in town. But, “our” people are like my old Carhartt jacket—they are comfortable and I miss them when they’ve been in the closet too long. Perhaps I could do a little better with that metaphor. However, I like living among people as familiar to me as the frayed cuffs of my rugged, mostly brown cotton duck coat.
So, for me to have my choice of neighbors and neighborhoods, it is our neighbors who have to put up with me. To keep from going even deeper into debt, I have to fix my own stuff, inside and outside.
Awesome segue.
I'm good with cars. Really good. And I like it. Not in the way one likes kittens. More like the way people like boxing, and crossword puzzles. When an engine is ailing, one must determine why. Often it’s a guess, like a crossword. You write in the word with pencil, because if you guess wrong, you have to start over. This is a lot easier if you need only one guess. It is the same for automotive repair. You take your best shot then go in swinging. The object is to avoid doing anything that cannot be undone. You use a screwdriver or a breaker bar like a pencil with a stubby eraser—tread lightly: removing the mistake might tear the paper.
When Sean’s number came up on my caller ID last week, I almost didn’t answer. It was the type of office day that was made for Valium and cheap beer. I was answering only the calls that would get me closer to the end of my day. Sean had nothing to offer me to that end, but he doesn’t usually call without a good reason. So I answered.
It is a homely Honda Civic, which implies there is any other kind. It would not start, he said into my ear. It was parked in a big shopping complex, so the chances of it being detected as a no-goer were slim—thus avoiding a hefty tow fee. Sean laid out the timeline of symptoms leading up to how his car came to its resting place in front of a Subway sandwich franchise. If this were a crossword, I would know what letters went into what boxes. I could’a done it in ink—I knew the answer. I grabbed my old Carhartt jacket and headed out the door.
With a grating lack of humility, I confirmed my guess and gave Sean a “Push Starting 101” lesson. With a little bucking and heaving, the old Honda came to life.
But he still had that look on his face—fear that a pyrotechnic and permanent car failure seemed imminent. This fear germinated nicely since his Honda was already running on fewer cylinders than the spark plug count.
Even though I knew I’d be pushing the neighbors’ goodly nature, I had Sean’s car in my driveway anyway. I feel these minor non-native car repairs should be kept to a minimum. Toward that end, I always meet my biker buddies outside of the neighborhood. No matter how delightful a Harley V-Twin sucking air through a big S&S and spitting it out through a couple of Vance and Hines might sound to me, the extent of my neighbors’ internal combustion celebration revolves around leaf blowers and lawnmowers. Who am I to upset that balance? So under the cover of daylight on a day when everyone in the neighborhood was home, I fixed Sean’s car. It was gone ASAP.
When his Honda stuttered up the hill from my house, I looked around sheepishly, but there were no stern gazes coming from the surrounding yards. Well, just like my cat, I figured if I got away with that…
The manual read: “Remove engine mounts from brackets and install new ones.” Seems simple. Eight hours later I was lying in the rain, coveralls soaked through, a nasty cut on my hand, and that last bolt refusing to go into the hole it came out of. But I knew I had the job against the ropes, and I was not going to back down, even if I had to smack the ref. To say my language was colourful at this point would be generous. I happened to cast a glance out from under my car and saw my neighbor’s feet. Nothing classes up a joint like fowling the air with obscenities while working on a pickup in the rain. I extracted myself from the job and apologized. She was gracious.
For a year now, this very neighbor had been trying to get me to look at a car that had been sitting lifeless in her garage for a half a decade. Now, it is not uncommon for my neighbors to pop in with an automotive question or two. But this neighbor, whose property overlooks ours, has had to overlook my busy driveway more than the others. I wasn’t going to reward such tolerance by declining her when she needed automotive help.
Riding the wave of guilt stemming from my gutter language, I walked over to her garage. I took a deep breath because I knew I was about to fall in love.
She was red with chrome in all the right places. A little worn from the years but still quite the looker. I caressed her in a way that would raise my wife’s eyebrows.
She is a 1952 MGTD. Slung low, and though the grill seemed to be bearing teeth, it felt like she was pouting. It had been years since anyone had taken her out. I was hooked and I could see my neighbor knew it. She handed me the thumb-drive with the manual on it.
Working on this car would be like doing a crossword in an English much different than the English used in the manuals for my Chevy truck or Harley. What the hell is a spanner? When it comes to working on cars, I am a boxer. My toolbox is full of devices that force nuts and bolts to my will or they hit the canvas in a broken knockout. This MGTD needed a ballet dancer stroking a light touch, using tools made of silk and taffeta. Still, I stepped into the garage and lifted the “bonnet.” I moved slowly, as if I were leading a lady onto the dance floor. It was at this point that the hood pivot ripped posthaste from the cowling—leaving a bolt hanging, crowned with rusted metal. The sound alone made the angels cry and left me feeling a little faint. The owner was not surprised—she knew this car needed help. I thanked the God I’d been cursing just a few minutes before.
Those not impressed by the beauty of polished valve covers and the graceful coil of a fuel line will not understand how such things can lead to my near psychotic resolve to make this car live again. I had my first British love affair with English motorcycles. Marquees like Triumph, Norton, and BSA still make me smile. They also remind me of an old bumper sticker hanging on a wall in a Brit car shop: All the parts falling off this car are of the Highest English Craftsmanship. This is a humorous reminder that the English seem to think form triumphs over function. That’s American for This Might Suck.
This might be an opportunity to atone a little for all the years my neighbors silently endured my clattering diesel’s daily assent out of our cul-de-sac—fouling the air with sound and smoke from burning vegetables and dinosaur fuels. I'm sure it wouldn’t hurt them at all to see this red sprite of an MGTD flittering up the street—with a little help from me.
I'm getting better at doing my research first. My coveralls were dripping in the garage and hydrogen peroxide boiled in the cut on my hand. With my other hand it took all of ten seconds on the Internet to discover the info that would have saved me six hours of lying in the mud and grit under the truck. (I said I was getting better at doing research first, not that I had it dialed.) It made me mindful that if I made this kind of mistake with the MG, it might cost more than lost time. It could mean breaking a piece that may require years on eBay to find another. I explored the possibility I should trade in my coveralls for a tutu…or just be very careful.
The guys who came to kick the tires of my diesel van wouldn’t need too much convincing to believe that anyone who would drive a 1952 MGTD would wear a tutu. They would think the car was cute, only to wonder how much tongue weight it could handle if a trailer hitch were welded to the back bumper.
A couple of my neighbors cleave to the notion that any time is a good time to fire up the weed eater—even at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I generously deem that this is not a passive aggressive way to thank me for sprinkling the ‘hood with cars so rich with personality. Truth be told, it may be their way of suggesting that occasionally warming up my yard equipment might be a good idea. And it doesn’t seem to help when I say that I eschew yard care as a matter of thinking globally by not mowing locally.
I miss a lot of the rural pursuits I enjoyed before becoming a member of the Corvallis community. I gave them up to become someone I would have made fun of, back when I owned camo clothing. But, it would be harder to give up the life I have now. And no matter how tall my grass is, I prefer popping a hood open in my driveway. It’s where I fit in the social stratification of our neighborhood.
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