Never the Same #80 Forgotten Fragments and Remembered Remnants

Throughout this long-winded autobiography, there are many recollected bits of Kirk’s life, but to how many instances are forgotten, we’ll never know.

       

   

 

Cue: “Are You Sitting Comfortably?” https://youtu.be/aPcPApPO20s?si=BdUlfeyH5a7uPVIN

             

            Kirk’s father never had much to say to his son except mainly job assignments around the farm and the bare necessities on how to carry them out, and well, the occasion dig especially about money. Yet, his father couldn’t stop talking around his farmer friends earning him a reputation of being a gabber with his corn customers. Kirk thought he sold corn just so he could go to blab on and on with the pretense of selling corn. When Kirk, on an offhand happenstance, see one of the farmer customers, they’d tell him that they couldn’t get away from his father once he started in talking. On the other hand, he’d have a couple favorite jokes that were in good taste but wore them out.

            For instance, there was the one where the little guy showed up at the Great North Woods to apply for a job as a logger. Walking up to the burly Buffalo Plaid wearing Crew Boss, the little guy told him he needed a job.

            Scoffing, the crew boss, said, “You’re such a little guy, can you even handle an axe, pike, or a chain saw?”

            “I can out-cut anyone on your crew.”

            The burly boss scoffed again, “Okay, where’d you get any kind of logging experience?”    “The Sahara Forest,” the little guy said assertively.                

            The boss laughed outright, “There’s only the Sahara Desert, you know.”   

The little guy spread his legs, crossed his arms, and glared at the boss straight in the eye, “Yeah, now,” he simply said. 

***

            So Kirk’s father would cite the punch line at every possible occasion whether it applied or not, “Yeah, now!”

            Kirk wasn’t doing all that well mentally and emotionally after the Firebird incident. His only outlet was his oft times with Sarah Elizabeth who always helped level Kirk out. Anyway, one morning, his father apparently decided to tweak Kirk a bit.

            “When are you getting a job? Your board is due this week.”

            “When are YOU getting a job?” Kirk snapped back, quickly stood up that shot his chair backwards with his knees.

            “I retired,” his father replied. “I’m getting retirement and Social Security.”

            Even though Kirk burned under the collar, he didn’t know what to say. “I’m looking for a job every week, but no one’s hiring.”

            “Maybe you should look for a job in the Sahara Forest.” With a grin despite the tiff, he paused for effect. “YEAH, NOW!”

            Kirk couldn’t take it and stalked out.

***

            Halloween rolled around, not one of his most favorite holidays, especially after the childhood ballerina episode. If you don’t know anything about that, you’ll have to check into one of the many numerous episodes back. One of those incidents Kirk would rather forget, but he cannot, no matter how hard he tries. Halloween would just come and go without Kirk’s notice except for the cringe memory.

            Every time he walked by it, Kirk now cringed, gazing and considering the heart status of his precious Firebird. Now he considered it impotent after his horrible blunder knowing darn well he should’ve listened to his inner voice. You always gotta’ listen to your inner voice.  Regrets always sink in and linger in Kirk’s mind especially when he’s impulsive, so impulsive that something happens that he regrets. So there the car sits after he replaced the engine bearings because it made those demoralizing scary noises. Is it as powerful and fast as before he worked on it? Truthfully, he’ll never know. I mean never. He went back to work on the stock car which now had a bit tighter budget and three lost days of work. We know that his hobby was expensive and inherently dangerous, but he loved it just the same.

            Basically, all he had done so far was to clean up the frame and set to work on building the roll cage. Lots and lots of welding already done with more to be done on the roll cage. Think a bird cage made out of two-inch diameter black pipe. Of course, Jon, his brother-in-law had helped him on weekends, but Kirk knew it remained up to him to do the bulk of the designing and building. Oh, the other thing done was that he found, stripped, and welded up the Ford Pinto body. Some days, depending on his mood, Kirk wasn’t sure if he made the right choice in purchasing the body, but he wanted to have a more of an up-to-date look to his race car after his 1936 coupe the previous season. Though thoroughly honest to himself, he now faced the factual reality that he can’t change car bodies now without major modifications because he carefully designed the roll cage to hug the inside dimensions and height of the Pinto. In other words, there’s no going back now without a significant reboot.  ‘Course if he mentions using a Pinto body, a wise guy might warn Kirk not to get hit in the back end out on the track because of those well-publicized incidents of when Pintos got involved in rear end collisions and would promptly explode.   

            Eying up the “bones” of the stock car’s roll cage, it showed the main shape, patterned after the Pinto body, carefully designed and tediously welded in permanently solid. Kirk had one door panel protection done. He still had the other door, X’s in the roof and behind the seat to build, but he didn’t see those as any real challenge. Seeing he remained a bit miffed at the time, he thought about perusing the latest Summit Racing catalog which always soothed him as a gear head’s toy store. Even though he didn’t have blueprints, schematics, or even pictures Kirk had a “basic” idea on how to build the front independent suspension. No, he never worked on a racing suspension like he envisioned though he did eye up plenty examples at the race tracks seeing both good and bad examples.

            Checking out the catalog, Kirk knew he had to purchase four Heim ends for the front upper A-arms and four for the rear trailing arms.  No, wait, he needed six for the back. On each side of the rear, one end for the front pivot and two on the rear axle mount mounted in a triangular ladder-type control arm. The front A-arms, triangular in structure hence the “A”, had the ball joints at the point and two Heim ends at the legs. So that equals the required four. Heim ends allow a wide range of adjustment to make suspension fine tuning at the track easy.

             Heim ends are best described as steel spherical articulating joints which have two ends mounted perpendicular to one another but incorporating a spherical bearing allowing swivel and horizontal movements at the same time. The bearing is metal to metal so there is no lost motion while the other end has a solid threaded mounting with either male or female fittings. Perfect for race car suspension applications like Kirk intended. He planned to order them with three-quarter inch female fittings which are more than heavy enough for his intentions. Can’t be too careful on suspension items remained his thinking; he’d rather over-engineer the assembly rather than have a catastrophic failure later on the track! He’s been through that crashing stuff once already!

            The lower -arms remained stock with no adjustment, but he put on his order form the lower A-frame bearings which are greased metal to metal joints replacing the original flexible rubber bushings which were okay for the road but would never do on the track. He came across racing quality ball joints in the catalog. Oh, oh!  Of course, he knew that he needed ball joints, but as he looked at the listings, he saw a myriad of different applications. He had known all along that he would install disc brakes on the front with drums in the back, but he didn’t know where the disc brakes were coming from. This sudden insight meant a trip to Crazy Ed’s in the cold wet, early winter weather. The way things usually go for Kirk; he pays for the lack of foresight.

***

            As a light, wet snow drove down sogging everything it touched, Kirk packed up with warm clothes and work gloves and took off with the pink van. With the windshield wipers slapping half-time, Kirk headed to Ed’s auto graveyard in no big hurry. Sometimes Kirk could lose motivation in a hurry or not have it in the first place, but he wanted to keep making progress on his stock car because he knew, he really knew from experience that the winter would fly by and he’d kick himself for not trying harder, not working intensely enough. Pulling into Ed’s greasy driveway, the place appeared deserted. From his experience last winter, Kirk remembered that Ed didn’t keep a helper around during the cold months because there wasn’t as much of a call for used car parts. Ed didn’t crush and haul cars either.

            Getting out of the van, Kirk heard noises from within the pole building and saw lights shining in the windows. Kirk let himself in and observed Ed disassembling a V-8 engine of some sort. Kirk thought it looked like a Ford. Ed looked up.

            “Hey! It’s Kirk, the boy racer. How’s it going these days?”

            “Doin’ okay. Just working on my new stock car and need some parts.”

            Ed paused stood up with a groan and a look. “Ah…not many guys building cars right now, ya’ know?”

            Kirk really didn’t know, but said, “Yeah, I guess.” Anyway.

            “So. What’cha need on this visit?”

            “Well, I hope you have something with disk brakes on it. Hoping for a Chevy. I guess that I’ll need the spindles, disks and calipers. The works. Hmm, not the ball joints.”

            “Maybe got one for you. A smashed up ’69. I don’t know exactly the condition ‘cuz one of the wheels took a hit, so the disk?” He shrugged. “Let’s go take a look�"it’s not far in.”

            As the two guys walked, the wet snow fell lightly with an audible ticking on the sheet metal of the cars piled up along the way up against the barrier fence. Kirk thought he perceived a 1969 Chevrolet, maybe a Caprice, up ahead that incidentally sat there upside down on its roof atop another squashed car, a Dodge.

            “That it on the right?” Kirk asked, with a finger point.  

            “That would be the one,” Ed said succinctly.

            The car sat with its front end away from them. Seeing the wheels reached for a highway in the cloudy sky, looking somewhat like a dead bug, Kirk saw right away that the car had taken a hard knock on the right side�"no, the left side.  Kirk stood on the Dodge’s fender to take a closer look, and indeed, as Ed said, the wheel had quite the flat spot from the accident. Kirk’s hopes took a nose dive thinking that the disk probably took a hit as well; however, from the backside of the disk, it looked okay to Kirk.

            “Will these do ‘ya?” Ed asked.

            “Looks good to me.”

            “I’ll get my truck,” Ed said, and ambled off back to the shop.

            Within moments he came back with his loud truck. Kirk might have said that he was jealous of Ed’s truck even though it was kind of beat up with numerous dings and scrapes everywhere on its body. On the back of the truck was what piqued Kirk jealously. There was an engine-powered arc welder, a large-tanked, engine-powered air compressor, and strapped to the headache rack was a set of heavy duty oxy/acetylene torches. Yeah, Kirk could imagine himself being a mobile scrapper and/or repair guru.

            Ed dragged off the air hose with impact wrench already plugged in. With ten quick brrrrpts, Ed spun off the lug nuts with wheels falling and flumping to the ground. Kirk wanted to get involved, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to get in the way of a relentless workin’ man on a mission.

            Ed gestured Kirk closer. “Grab the ball peen and the short bar.”

            Which he did. Ed fired off the torch with a pop and a hiss and went to town on the nuts on the ball joints and tie rod ends. Kirk watched as the nuts turned red and molten then getting blown to destruction with the “heat wrench” blow torch function. As Ed went to the other side, Kirk knew what to do. Jamming the bar between the spindle arm and the tie rod, he pried with all his weight and whammed the spindle arm with the ball peen. “BANG!” and the tie rod end neatly fell out. Turning to the ball joints, it took Kirk several whacks each, but grabbed the warm spindle and disk before the last one fell off, effectively stopping it from tumbling to the ground. BTW, Ed burned off the metal brake lines with a bit of flame throwing with brake fluid aflame. Kirk repeated on the other side, grinning to himself that these spindles would be fun to assemble on his stock car thereby making a true step towards a real racer.

            “Wow!” Said Kirk, “That made quick work of it.”

            “Yep, I’ve done it before,” Ed said smugly.

            “So what do I owe you?” Kirk said, eyeing his prizes.

            “How ‘bout a fifty?”

            Kirk expected at least a hundred and didn’t want to rob his number one used parts supplier. “Are you sure? I expected more for spindles and brake assemblies like this.”

            “Yeah, that’ll be just fine." As Kirk paid him, Ed continued with a questing inquiry. “So what do you think is going to happen with racing next year?”

            Kirk paused unsure of what Ed meant by his comment. “Oh, I don’t know, probably the same as always. Maybe a better year for me with my new car.” He shrugged unsure of what else to say, so he just said, “hey, thanks. Now, you can get out of this weather.” Kirk said, peering up into the sky with his hand out.

            “I think I might do just that, racer boy.” Ed said, climbing into his truck.

            Kirk picked up his two spindles and followed Ed’s truck going in reverse back to the shop. Kirk gave him a quick wave as he loaded the spindles in his pink van.

            At this point, Kirk could have no idea, no inkling that this trip would be the very last time he would deal or even see Crazy Ed and his Grand Emporium of Used Auto Parts.

            Kirk headed home with his spindles, happy that he could finalize his order with Summit Racing. It would be a challenge, yet fun to build the front suspension after all the pipe bending and marathon welding on the roll cage.

***

            Anyway, Kirk’s father would often circle back to his other favorite joke’s punchline, “What’s that noise?!”

            Apparently, he had the recurring theme to his tired jokes of woodcutting and logging. In this one, a little guy logger (recurring character) heard that instead of being able to cut just an acre and a half of woods with his axe, it was advertised that with a new cutting machine, he’d be able to cut a whopping four acres a day. The little guy was all in on that because more logs meant more cash. So he got the machine. After a day of cutting, the little guy came back dissatisfied with the machine saying he could only cut one acre of woods a day. The salesman couldn’t understand the problem so he took the machine, pulled the cord, and BRRRRRPP! The chain saw started.

            You guessed it, “What’s that noise?” The little guy exclaimed.     

            Kirk got tired of the tired old jokes, yet his father seemed rather proud of himself replaying the jokes. Overall, Kirk just remained peeved with his situation at home that didn’t look to improve anytime soon or never.

            Kirk wandered out to his quiet, one-man garage to realize his favorite condition: solitude. He was Just the Same with his continuing mission of building his dream stock car, but it needed so much more work and money…