The New American Digest

submitted by Wild, wild west

Spring break 1977, I scooted my ’72 Toyota Land Cruiser out to North Carolina on a lost love mission. I had met this young lady in college after the army and we had hit it off pretty well but the year before we graduated, her folks moved back to New Bern (or near enough) and she went with them and end of story, I thought, except it wasn’t.

After a while we got back in touch and after much encouragement (probably didn’t take her that much), I got in the Land Cruiser and headed East with the band Head East blaring on the 8- track. Who remembers Head East? Anyway, it was a two day trip from where I lived and I’d just had the windshield replaced and was highly annoyed the second day when I ran into some rain and a water leak started around the top of the windshield pretty much centered on where I looked out through it. But I kept sopping up the leak best as I could with paper towels and napkins and ran out of the rain eventually.

About an hour from destination, it started getting dark and I switched on the head lights and oncoming traffic started flashing headlights at me. I noticed my headlights weren’t illuminating much so I pulled over to discover the marker lights were working but the headlights weren’t. There looked to be a town up ahead, so I drove on in and pulled up in front of a country grocery store that I remember looking a lot like the one in DT’s recent “Late Night Gas” posting, popped the hood and started looking for the trouble. The old fart in the store had no flashlights for sale nor one to loan me. Eventually I decided to just hot wire the lights directly to the battery but the old bastidge in the store had no wire to sell either.

It was later determined that the water leak had shorted out a fusible link in the wiring for the lights, but I did not know that then nor did I have any way to trace it down had I suspected it.

Now, it was Friday night and there was a continual stream of folks coming in to buy a six-pack or a bottle of wine and a couple bucks of gas and I was getting a little concerned because they were all giving me rather unsavory looks. I was, to be blunt about it, of a different ethnic background, if you catch my drift, and being a long way from home, to be blunt again, I was greatly comforted by the .45 automatic tucked in beside the front seat.

.45, of course, because they don’t make a .46……..

About that time a guy in a Camaro drove up and noticed that he and I were the only members of our ethnic community present, so he struck up a conversation and went to thinking about where he could find some wire at that time of night. Then a beat up mid-60’s 98 Oldsmobile came ka-lump ka-lumping in and parked under the awning. A huge black guy gets out of the car and shot me a hell of a look before going in the store and coming back out with a jug of wine and got in the car and looked back over at me and said, “Whitefolks, you got a problem?”

Now that could be taken several ways, but I took a leap of faith buttressed by the fact that I was closer to that Colt than he was to me, and said, as politely as I could, “Yeah, my headlights died and I’m trying to fix ‘em.”

“What you need to fix ‘em?” he asked and I told him I was gonna hot wire them to the battery if I could find about five foot of wire and he said, dang, this ain’t my cah but I’ll look in the trunk, which he did but there was no wire in the trunk and he stood there scratching his head for a moment before flashing a big smile and he said, “I’ll get you some wire.”

He popped the hood of that beat up Oldsmobile and started feeling around on the wiring harness, starting at the firewall and working his way toward the front and then felt his way back and grabbed one wire in particular with his enormous hand and after giving it a couple tugs, grabbed it with both hands and jerked it loose from whatever it was attached to and started pulling wire out of the engine bay of the Olds that was not his car, hand over hand like he was pulling rope off of a spool.

I hollered out, “Hey, are you sure you want to do that,” and the Camaro driver said, “Let him alone, he looks pretty sure to me,” which was the absolute truth and this mountain of a man turns to me with what looked like ten feet of wire and asked did I think that was enough.

Uh, yeah, I think that’ll about do it……..

He insisted on doing the hot wire himself and wouldn’t take a dime for his efforts and I got the hell out of there before anything else could happen and that’s the way I finally got to New Bern, North Carolina (or near enough) on Spring Break, 1977.

Had a pretty good time with the young lady in North Carolina and we made some probably unrealistic plans for the future that fell through in relatively short order. You can’t fight time and distance and I’m pretty sure her parents were not delighted with the whole idea but C’est la Guerre.

THE END

submitted by SK and ghostsniper via comments
“A poem Anne referred us to some time ago comes to mind:” and “In reply to SK”

From SK:

Trees – Joyce Kilmer 1886 – 1918

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

---

and ghost’s reply:

And then there’s this:

Rush – The Trees

[Intro]
There is unrest in the forest, there is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight, and the oaks ignore their pleas

[Verse 1]
The trouble with the maples, and they’re quite convinced they’re right
They say the oaks are just too lofty, and they grab up all the light
But the oaks can’t help their feelings if they like the way they’re made
And they wonder why the maples can’t be happy in their shade

[Bridge]
There is trouble in the forest, and the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream, “Oppression!”, and the oaks just shake their heads

[Instrumental Break]

[Verse 2]
So the maples formed a union, and demanded equal rights
“The oaks are just too greedy, we will make them give us light”
Now there’s no more oak oppression, for they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw

===================
===================

This classic prog-rock track from Rush’s 1978 album Hemispheres tells the story of a conflict between oaks and maples. It ends with a sense of “equality”, but at the righteous and/or sinister expense from the imposed and/or agreed upon acts of justified (or unjustified) violence of destruction.

Constructively, or rather musically and rhythmically, Rush’s signature time signature changes include 4/4 (standard 4 beats per measure, introduced in Verse 1), 6/8 (fairly common time, especially throughout this song, during the choruses and the acoustic guitar-driven sections), and 5/4 (a relatively uncommon meter).

Rush invokes 5/4 time intermittently throughout the song’s instrumental break (which comprises 50% of the song), which brings in a lyric-free musical sense of conflict, mystery, and tension (ripe with the 7-measure hard-rock guitar solo), but only after the break’s first section of a peacefully bucolic, woodland nature in 4/4 time. 

The hard rock 5/4 guitar solo then merges back to the instrumental guitar-driven 6/8 meter, but not before a brief foray into 5/4 resolving back to 4/4 in time for the resolution of the revolution in the final (outro) lyrical sections, with the dramatic vocalized penultimate decree (“by hatchet, ax, and saw”).

While the song may appear to simply reflect upon the futility of conflict, given Neil Peart, Rush’s drummer, and lyricist, stated that they were based on a random image that once drifted into his head, the band’s history suggests alternate interpretations.

As the-the-then 1970’s adherents of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, the band bought-into the virtues of selfishness (as being for the greater good, assumably); thus, the oaks are justified in “grabbing up all the light” by their superior nature.

(Curiously, the annotations to the song herein substantiate the maple as being the national tree of Canada, Rush’s home country, vs. oaks, the national tree of both Great Britain and the U.S.A). 

The equalizing influences (“hatchet, axe, and saw”) are those of democracy and socialism, which curtail the dominance of the strong. 

And yet in the hands of the strong (e.g., the wealth and power of despotic oligarchs) the same means oppress the weak, ensuring inequality reigns-in those without economic, educational, and/or militaristic strength (including the fortitude to fight against injustices). 

Is Ayn Rand’s hyper-capitalistic philosophy a travesty? 

It depends on the definition of “capitalism” and how governments decide to uphold, exploit, de-regulate, or regulate the concept (as they define it?), and whether that American “invisible hand” chops down trees, plants seeds, or some variation of both.

1962 Corvair Spyder
(My first car)

This is my reply to GrayDog … [DT: see “Broken down cars” by SnakepitKansas]

My dad bought this car for me in 1971 when I was 16 for $300 and I paid him back at $50 a week. A year later I traded it in for a 1966 Mustang HiPo convertible and I paid $1000 for it of my own money from working in concrete construction.

If you look at the attached pik you’ll get an idea of what I am going to write.

The Corvair drivetrain is set up like this, from front to rear – transmission, rear end-transaxle, engine. The transmission is connected to the partial frame at the front with 2 motor mounts. The transaxle is supported by the suspension. The engine is supported with just ONE motor mount at the very rear in the middle.

If you look at the attached pik there is a silver circle “thing” right in the middle at the very rear. That is the fuel pump (diaphram type, center vertical plunger, rides on lobes on the cam) and is important as you will see.

Directly under the fuel pump is the single motor mount. The mount is sort of like a fancy angle iron with a hole drilled through it. That angle iron matches with another angle iron mounted on the rear most part of the frame with a nut welded to it. Now this is what I consider a design flaw. The 9/16″ bolt that connects the 2 angle irons together is inserted from below and held in place by a cotter pin.

My dad was an airplane mechanic (C119 flying boxcar) in the air force in Japan in the early 50’s and one of the many things he told me was that all bolts were inserted from above because if the nut falls off the bottom the bolt will remain in the hole doing it’s job. Corvair apparently did not have air force airplane mechanics in their design line up.

At 16 I was very damaging to anything with an engine and this Corvair got a fair share of my abuse. And I spent a lot of time fixing on it. Stuff like changing out clutch discs and pressure plates and throw out bearings, replacing sheared off bolts on the ring gear in the transaxle, valve jobs on the heads, replacing cylinder sleeves, you know, routine stuff for a young dood with high detergent 30w running though his veins. lol

That drive train spent as much time on the driveway as it did in the car. Well, apparently, when I had last had the engine out, upon putting it back together I had neglected to reinstall the cotter pin that kept the motor mount connected to the car. Vibration rotated the bolt, and down it fell on the road with the engine following it.

Are you still with me?

I walked down the road and luckily found that bolt.
Note the spare tire. Under it is a bumper jack – remember them things? I laid the tire at the rear of the car, and using it as a fulcrum, I used the shaft of the bumper jack to lift the engine up and inline with the motor mount. Not as easy as it might seem.

An engine is heavy, hundreds of pounds and at that time I was maybe 150 lbs. I had to stand on that jack to get the needed leverage. I also grabbed a large tree branch laying along the rural road to act as a spacer while lifting the engine. It was a balancing act. 1 foot on the jack, lift the engine, scoot the branch with my other foot. Rinse, repeat, inching that engine into position. I got that bolt back in there but could only hand tighten it and that wouldn’t do. I had a pocket knife so I cut the horn wire and used it to make a “cotter pin” to keep that bolt from falling out again.

Keep in mind this was in the summer of 1971 in southwest FL and it was a hot as a half ****ed fox. I was sweaty and hot and thirsty and miserable and 30 miles from home.

I jumped in and cranked the key but it would not start. Looking at the engine again I noticed something odd about that fuel pump. It was broken loose from the block. WTF???? When that engine dropped down to the ground that fuel pump hit the motor mount on the way down and broke off at the shaft. JFC!!!

After pondering this new dilema for a few mins I came up with an idea. I cut some more horn wire. I wedged one end of that bumper jack under the spare tire bracket, across the top of that fuel pump, and while pushing the pump down hard into the block I wired the other end of the jack to the battery bracket. What a mess.

But.

It worked!!!
I cranked it a couple times, pulled the manual choke, and violin! it started. And ran fine!

When I got home no one else was there so I stole one of my Dad’s Schlitz brews and went out on the back porch and lit me up a B52 bomber and zoned out. LOL

Just one of thousand of adventures of a yound dood with what would now be called over the top ADHD and endlesss curiosity and just enough retardedry to be almost dangerous.

submitted by Anne via Comments

I am a pretty calm gal. Don’t usually get upset–just try to take things in my stride as they used to say.
HOWEVER, when DH and I met (1981) he was driving a 1974 or 1975 two door Saab. We had that car until 1988. Gads I hated that car–no power steering, an absence of comfort that would have made a Swedish Lutheran pastor feel noble!

We moved to Seattle, and that thing began to not like to start. One day right down there on the main street that goes by the Ballard Locks, “we” (the car and I) had a nervous breakdown. I stopped at a red light–it just stopped. In the back seat was one of those rubber headed mallets. I popped the hood and began pounding on everything–anything–whatever I could reach!

Fortunately (or not), I was stalled in front of the woodworking shop, and the men there saw what was going on. One of them came out to explain that I was not using the appropriate strategy for restarting the car. He was very nice, and I cooled off a little. He didn’t get too close until I put the mallet down! Cars were honking as they had to pull around me and go into the oncoming traffic, just to proceed with their own lives! He got it started, and I jumped in and held the gas down while he shut the lid. DH finally got rid of that socialist piece of crap!

We had it for the two years before when we lived in West Texas. Everytime we left town and headed toward Montana we could only get as far as Ft. Sumner New Mexico before it just shut down. It would eat that west Texas dust and fill up that piece of equipment that you only access by taking all the luggage out of the trunk. There was a great Navajo kid who worked at the only gas station in that town. He got so used to us he was like family!

Oh, can’t forget to tell you that after we got rid of all the Texas dust we would continue our drive north to Montana, and every time we hit Casper we had to spend the night in the cheapest possible motel so DH could take something else apart, and clean it out, and put it back together.

One year on the way home for Christmas we parked in a covered parking lot at a hotel in Billings. Had two cases of Texas Red Grapefruit packed on the back seat for family Christmas presents. The temperature dropped down to -30 something that night. When we finally got home to Missoula the next day the grapefruit in the back seat were frozen solid ! Did I tell you the heater and the thing (defroster) that is supposed to keep the windows clear were not working together? Can you imagine how cold it got in that car!

Now maybe you understand why I finally broke down and took the rubber mallet to the carburetor, or the engine block, or whatever the H*LL else I could reach that day in Seattle! 🙂

Pray for us!