Never the Same IC#9 Kirk's Cars: Part One

Ramblin’ around in farm fields, grease monkeys under cars, and making donuts in parking lots

                 I apologize for putting “Kirk’s Love Life” on pause, but this timid author has trepidations on publishing explicit pornography. So for now, we’re stepping back, way back in time again with this episode about Kirk’s cars.

                Cue: “Hot Rod Heart” https://youtu.be/nEajUVe1SXQ

                We return again to Kirk’s childhood to see how he became involved with cars and where his passion eventually took him. We need to remember that Kirk was a shy, awkward, chubby, lonely boy who spent a lot of time at home on the farm.

Earlier in Kirk’s story, we learned Kirk loved his toy tractors. After all, he grew up on a farm and so was exposed to the noise, smell, and work of tractors. As he got a little older, that mechanical appeal carried over to cars. He began absorbing car magazines that were cheap and plentiful in those days.  He favored the custom car magazines that had page after page of glitzy, gaudy, and shiny cars with stories of how those talented men took normal, everyday drivers and turned them into works of moving art. Kirk absorbed these magazines cover to cover and was enthralled with the amazing transformations. If they could do it, he could do it so he thought, but that kind of car artwork took time, money, and talent. As mentioned in earlier episodes, Kirk was not overly talented or coordinated. So we will see how far simple passion will take Kirk because money and talent were not all that plentiful in his life.

                Kirk read stories of famous racers, reading car-toons like those by Big Daddy Roth whose depiction of Rat Fink became famous among the automotive crowd. The cartoon Rat Fink was a ugly humanized rat creature with huge buggy bloodshot eyes, skinny hairy arms and legs, and long scrawny fingers that usually gripped an oversized shifter.  Rat Fink most often sat in an open-topped hot rod sporting an over-the-top oversized engine that spewed huge smoke and fire. Young Kirk tried to duplicate the crazy cartoons and emulate the talent of the artist the best he could, but Kirk was no artist by any means. 

                As a child, Kirk took notice of the big boys around school and town with their noisy, fast cars in the era when muscle cars just began being produced by the major car manufacturers. To be a car buff, a so-called gearhead, it was a great time because every year cars got more horsepower and better styling that looked faster and produced more speed. Every year, car buffs couldn’t wait for the next year’s models to be unveiled. Always fun and breathtaking for little Kirk even though he had years to go before he could even get a learner’s permit. But he dreamed just the same of fast street cars, careening stock cars, and ripping-a*s drag cars. He stayed tuned to the news and watched the big races knowing all the names of big names from the competition car world. This proved a happy place Kirk could escape to in his dreams away from the little farm in the middle of nowhere that held no future interest to him. Kirk would escape in a fast car. But little did he know…

                A couple years after the health building runaway incident at the county fair, young preteen Kirk convinced his parents to let him watch the sprint car races at the fair. Of course things were different back in those days and because they weren’t interested, his parents allowed him to watch the races alone. This didn’t bother him in the least because he was used to wandering, exploring on his own all the time anyway.

The races would be held on the dirt oval horse racing track, the same one Kirk would one day march on as a school marching band drummer as covered in an earlier episode. Kirk was enthralled with the small, squat open cockpit cars as they first came out on the track. Their engines, when revved up, belched flame and smoke and ear-splitting exhaust noise. Kirk really knew this sort of thing was his thing. After a few warm up laps and the cars formed up in a moving double row, the green flag dropped and the race was on.

                Never seeing a dirt race before, Kirk’s little heart hammered in his chest with a complete and total immersion in the exciting event. Instantly going into the first turn the cars roared at full throttle, but then, to Kirk’s amazement and fascination, the cars began going sideways! Not going straight through the corners like those asphalt racers on TV but sideways, the cars all tightly together with the drivers fighting to keep their cars pointed to the infield of all places! With dirt spewing like water hoses off the rear tires desperately digging in for precious traction, Kirk held his breath but couldn’t quite figure out the sideways movement around the corners, but he didn’t ponder it too deeply because he stayed glued to the non-stop high octane action. On the far turn, he saw one driver who didn’t stay close to the inside of the track, drifting higher, wider on the track, and in a blink, two cars snuck past him.

With the cars blasting down the grandstand straight, Kirk, spellbound, watched the cars go sideways , then straighten out again to careen down the back straightaway full blast only to, again, turn and slide sideways again around the turn. As they flew by, Kirk studied the drivers fighting the wheel to keep the speeding cars on track by maintaining the front wheels headed in the direction they wanted to go and yet on the corners the rears of the cars swung wide.

 Kirk likened the motion and interaction to a high-octane automotive ballet. After a couple laps, two cars tangled with one car spinning completely around and the other went up on two wheels and slid off the track. The red flag waved and the fire department raced to the driver’s rescue, who was, of course just fine. The audience loudly applauded making Kirk realize that there were other people with him in the grandstand!

With a race restarting green flag, the racers took off again in their crazy car dance with tires bumping and digging in, engines revving, and exhausts flame belching. After a few more laps, the race ended with the checkered flag the winner crossing a half a car length before the second place car. An excitingly close race for sure!

 Kirk took in a deep breath realizing he was holding his breath! He could never have imagined such a race event witnessed in person though he wished someone had been there with him to share it with, but he would tell them all about it later. As the winner came back around the track alone to hold the checkered flag, Kirk pushed through the crowd that had wandered out on the track. Flash pictures were being taken of the victorious driver sitting in his car, but Kirk studied the car closely, feeling the heat of the engine, the tread of the tires, the cockpit controls; he just took it all in.  

                As time marched on as time does, Kirk’s interest in cars waxed in intensity. He began assembling plastic model cars, doing famous race cars and new model muscle cars. Assembling the small pieces with glue helped improve his hand/eye coordination problems, and so his skill along those lines improved with every model he built. He began applying spray paint to give the cars a nice shiny finish like those in the magazines and on the street. Kirk began doing multi-color interiors and added stripes to the cars for more racy appearances. He even tried his hand at customizing by switching engines from other models, cutting wheel openings for bigger tires, and adding his own hand-crafted parts to the cars. With each and every one he imagined a real world version of his imaginary automotive world.

With his friends, Kirk attended drag races and stock car races. He made an early decision that stock cars would be the way to race rather than the short, straight shots of drag races. He thought they were boring. The action around oval stock car tracks with all the bumping and rubbing with inches apart, the smell and noise intoxicated the young impressionable Kirk. Nevertheless, he was still too young and there would many influential events to transpire before he could work on cars, customize them, or race them. Kirk was a dreamer; he dreamed of loud engines, spinning smoking tires, and becoming an automotive star. Somehow, he thought�"he would.   

                About that time, his older sister began steady dating a man who claimed to have raced in California, that celebrated place where all car nuts/gearheads wanted to be. This man always had different neat cars that he fixed up and sold, presumably for a profit. After a year or so, his sister married this man, Mike, and so Mike became Kirk’s brother-in-law. This situation proved rather fortuitous for young, budding gearhead Kirk. After settling down, Mike built a garage and stocked it with plenty of tools and equipment. Soon, Mike had built a stock car to race at the local oval tracks. Young teen Kirk thought the stock car was exceedingly awesome, but in reality, it was rather rough, slipshod, and slow. The car never won any races, but it was exposure to the stock car racing scene, and so, Kirk caught the local racing scene fever.

                Nevertheless, when his family didn’t go to the races, Kirk had the chance to ride to the races in a truck that pulled the stock car. He was a cool guy to be associated with a real race car! Anyway, brother-in-law Mike liked to stop off at various bars on the way home after the races.  Innocent Kirk would not go into bars because he knew he was underage and not allowed inside with a rowdy bar crowd. He was afraid of what he might see inside so he sat in the truck all those times after the races, but he was out there seen with the racing the crowd anyway!

                Being by himself in the stands during the races because he was too young to be in the pits, Kirk soon hooked up with pretty, tall Babe who we covered in an earlier episode. It stands to reiterate a scene on one of the cool late fall nights at the races, when Kirk dressed for style and not for warmth; he began shivering in the cold. With a warming smile, Babe took notice and taking his hands in hers pulled them under her warm jacket. Ingenuous Kirk relished her bodily warmth without embarrassment, excitement, or arousal so innocent and naive he was.

Cue: “Beep, Beep” https://youtu.be/enqNl7tdLR4

                So, these few automotive happenings and situations fueled Kirk’s interest in cars not including him putting his hands inside Babe’s jacket.  One other thing that probably sealed Kirk’s interest in car was the availability of his parents’ old rusty Rambler station wagon. Huh? You might say. Well, Kirk was all of twelve when his father parked the old car out back of the barn. Kirk thought, after all, he was only twelve and knew he couldn’t drive until fifteen years old at the youngest and that was with a learners permit. That was a very long way down the road for a preteen.

Kirk didn’t realize the potential of a station wagon to add to his budding passion so it sat there a while.  His father had said the car couldn’t be sold to drive on the road because the front springs had blown up through rusty fender supports. Well, his father had that problem fixed by a local iron worker who recompressed the springs and secured them with heavy duty iron and bolts. Overkill repair actually. Nevertheless, the car was still unsafe because the unibody (an early attempt to build cars without a frame) had badly rusted causing it to cave in midway so much that it jammed the doors permanently, very solidly, closed.

Being a fledging gearhead, Kirk decided it would be interesting just to check under the hood of the old rusty car after it sat so long. After chasing some mice away, he tinkered around for days, head under the hood, belly on the fender with feet up in the air. He learned the basic stuff like carburetors, ignition distributors, alternators, starters, and so on. From a repair manual, he learned what points, spark plus, fuel systems did though he didn’t know how to get better “hands-on” experience working on these mechanical things that made cars go.

Soon though, with a battery jump from a tractor and the help of a cousin who got a cup of raw gasoline to dump into the carburetor, he fired the old Rambler up. With that first start up after so long sitting out behind the barn, a thick noxious cloud of rusty blue smoke spewed out of the exhaust pipe, but it ran and kept running. Just like stock car drivers with welded up doors, he climbed in the window. Kirk had sat behind the wheel before, but being optimistic about it running, he had brought two fat pillows for him to sit on so he could see out the windshield over the dashboard. With a rattle, a shake, a shower of rusty flakes, and a cloud of dust and smoke, he was off.

Slowly, at first, he drove up and down the field lanes and slower yet on the fallow fields because of the roughness.  Young Kirk never got over unnervingly seeing the ground go by and an occasional weed flying up into the hole in the floor board. Kirk obsessed over his foot going out the hole and getting ripped off, so he solved this by cutting a small piece of thin plywood to throw over the hole in the floorboard. With time and experience, he gained speed and could occasionally slide the car a bit sideways if the ground was muddy, just like those dirt track drivers. His time in the old rusty Rambler was cut short not long after getting started because the bench seat he sat on broke loose and threatened to drop down onto the ground. His father eyed the car one day as little Kirk drove by and stopped him telling him that driving around with the loose seat was just plain dangerous and unsafe. His father didn’t care about breaking the boy’s heart and so, the junkman came and picked up the decrepit car a week later.  Nevertheless, the boy Kirk’s appetite for speed had been whetted.

Back in those days, stock car races aired almost every summer weekend on television and seeing Kirk watched a lot of TV, he watched each and every race. Those were the glory days of stock car racing with the likes of Richard Petty, Cale Yarbrough, and A.J. Foyt. Kirk imagined being out there with the big name drivers on the high-banked track, the cars side by side inches apart, rubbing and bumping all trying their best to be number one!  Better yet was going to the local races whenever he could with his brother-in-law and hanging out with Babe in the stands, but then afterwards the spectators were allowed in the pits.

Wandering through wannabe racer heaven called the pits, Kirk took in the makings of the stock cars, albeit, small time race cars. There were wide treadless tires, wide open exhaust pipes, and inside cockpits with roll cages, single bucket seats, and the bare necessities in way of gauges. There always had to be a tachometer right in front of the driver, so he could always know how fast his engine was turning. Don’t ever run your engine into the RED because that would be bad by making your engine explode! Kirk, one day far in the future, would break that important rule.       

                Little by little Kirk gained bits of knowledge and experience on his own, but actual hands-on work was a little difficult for the uncoordinated boy. Though, he never lost interest back in those days.  As mentioned, Kirk’s brother-in-law became a major automotive influence on him, seeing Mike seemed to be all cars, all the time. Mike had a fixation with being a member of the upside down club which meant that you weren’t racing hard enough unless sooner or later you rolled your car over onto its top.  Kirk wasn’t all that keen about achieving that goal, but he thought about it�"often. Between young Kirk and the brother-in-law, they wore an oval track into an old fallow hay field. It wasn’t smooth, it wasn’t banked at all, but after many, many laps the grass wore away, and it became a track�"sort of. Anyway, driving the couple of junkers around Mike always pushed them hard enough to slide around and such. Well, one day with an audience of three kids along with Kirk, Mike hit a bump too fast at an angle and over it went.  After one rotation, the car ended upside down, of course. Mike crawled out all proud of himself. That old junker car was toast, and Kirk towed it away with the old tractor, the car sliding along to the junkyard on it crushed-in top.

                Anyway, there were always car projects in progress at Mike’s garage, so without getting his hands dirty Kirk could watch wrenching, torching, welding, body filling, and painting going on. Kirk, still a bit unsure of himself still didn’t know what he wanted to do exactly in the automotive field, though he definitely liked cars and racing. He had those dreams and so was eager to watch a master at work transforming cars in need of work into road-worthy vehicles.  With time, Kirk began to get his hands dirty and that was one problem with him, he really didn’t like getting dirty and greasy. Early on, he worked with a rag in his back pocket handy to wipe his hands which he did often, a whole lot. Seeing cars were his thing, he pressed on learning what he could, when he could.

                In a step toward his selected occupation, or so he thought, Kirk took a job at the local gas station. There, he performed the lowly jobs of a grease monkey as they called them back in those days. Kirk would pump gas when the bell rang from someone driving over the hose in the driveway; he’d fix flat tires, but he mostly performed the main job of a grease monkey and that was he changed engine oil and greased the cars’ chassis if required. Kirk didn’t like the filthy, dirty tasks all that much and wiped his hands off more often than doing the dirty work. Nevertheless, he did learn some minor things primarily along the lines of how to check transmission, differential, and radiator levels. One has to start somewhere, right?    

                As a year or so passed, Kirk signed up for driver education so he could get his learners permit a year earlier. We covered this in a previous episode, where he rode his bicycle with a friend to school taking the class during the hot summer and spending those never ending, delightful afternoons with Babe when she babysat. Those days are the ones he’d remember forever.  

 After completing the driving class with flying colors and holding his permit, Kirk bothered everyone who had a license to ride along with him so he’d get some on the road experience, not that he felt he needed it, but he’d stay within the boundaries of law. Kirk couldn’t wait to be able to drive on his own, but he wanted to drive something other than his father’s big ole’ station wagon. His brother-in-law Mike offered up a car Kirk could fix up�"for free�"albeit it needed a lot of work. Kirk began work on the old Ford convertible, but in the meantime he put up with the family station wagon.

                When the magical day arrived, you know a driver’s license road test, Kirk nervously but confidently embarked on the road test. Performing very carefully with all the correct turn signaling, the complete stops, the back parking, and the three-point turns Kirk passed the test with flying colors. Not that he had any doubts because being a car guy he had to have a license at the earliest possible time. Proud of himself, he dropped his father at home and went cruising the local streets. Not overly brave yet, Kirk didn’t push any speed limits or go anywhere extravagant, but he was driving on his own and that, he felt was magical, a real milestone in his young life. It was a whole new era for our hometown hero. Maybe he was mild mannered behind the wheel at first, but after a couple months he began coming into his own.

                Learning a few things out in the farm fields beforehand with the old rusty Rambler and other junk cars, Kirk started incorporating those skills into the wide open world. For instance, when winter arrived, no snow-covered parking lot was safe from Kirk leaving his marks. Still driving his father’s station wagon, Kirk employed the Chevrolet’s V-8 power. Like the dirt trackers on the old county fair horse track, he’d fly into the vacant lot, crack the steering wheel, and floor the accelerator. The snow tires dug in and slung the big car sideways and around, so he’d face the other direction. A trooper turn: Basically a 180 degree directional change within a minimum space.

                In no time, he learned with a slower speed, a bit of parking brake, he could slide the car sideways for some distance. Kirk drifted cars before anyone coined the term. Anyway, his grand finale on snow would be a standing start with wheels turned, and he’d punch the gas and gradually the rear would slide around in a large circle until the circle got tighter and tighter. He had learned to do infamous donuts!

 Often out with his buddies, because transportation was always at a premium, sometimes with one guy riding shot gun and three shoulder to shoulder guys in the back, Kirk would find a suitable parking lot to do donuts. Kirk would smile to himself eyeing the rear view mirror as the three guys in the back sat wide-eyed while hanging on for dear life.

`               Maybe they thought Kirk was insane, perhaps he was…but he was never the same after learning the fun of making donuts!