Some days are all about gun, rod and church, others are about cars and that's exactly what went down today. The mission was simple, elegant even in its simplicity. Get a '71 El Camino and a '40s Ford Roadster hot rod out the door of the shop and into a hauler.
Great plan, but it fell apart on contact. The roadster wouldn't start for love or money so we pushed it out of the barn to make room for the Elkie, maybe that'd start and drive straight on through to the hauler and Californian Valhalla. No. It didn't.
Go figure, the battery was dead, so we pumped it up via my rig and a neighbor's heavy duty cables. Throaty SS Chevy growl, the beast was in play and we let it idle. Roadster? After messing with carbs and battery it fired up like the show car it is. Drive that bad boy right up in the hauler.
The Elkie went next and got up to the ramps, and we left it growling at the foot of trailer triumph. Just look at those chrome exhausts and fat back tires standing on the runway waiting for takeoff. Great result. Then it stopped and died. Awful, hideous result.
Maybe the fuel gauge wasn't working and the thing'd run out of gas. Someone went to get more and we refilled the tank. Still no result. Dam. The vehicle had to get on the hauler today and it wasn't running, utter disaster. What to do?
Long, very long story short, it looked like the coil was busted, power in, no power out. This left us with one option, ratchet, no fooling the thing up into the hauler, which is what we did. A beast, but we got it loaded and off on its way California, harming no one, I think.
And that was that. The hauler's long suffering driver was from Kazakhstan, curiously. "Where are you from?" he asked, "From England," I replied, ratcheted out. "Ah! Football! Which team you support?" Good question and I replied "Millwall," and he grinned from ear to ear, "Yes! Much fight! F*ck you Westham!" No kidding, and I grinned back.
"In Kazakhstan I drink pints, many pints, and watch football, and we fight. Manchester United hates Liverpool!" He even showed me his Man U tattoo, right there on his arm, under the big sky of Texas, "People here, they think I am Korean, but I am from the Caspian Sea."
Respect. Fella sleeps out of his dually until he has the money to get his wife and two children to the land of what used to be the home of the free and the brave. Good luck to him.
More on vehicular action as it plays out. God bless you all,
LSP
