By Buster McNutt
By the time you read this, I will generously NOT have won the $1.6 billion dollar Powerball Lottery. I practiced last week by NOT winning the $900 million dollar lottery, and think I have the procedure pretty much down pat. I have to assume none of you won either, since I’d guess the last thing on your mind would be to remember to have this publication delivered to your new double-wide houseboat down on the lake, river, or maybe just moored in one of your Olympic size pools, with just enough room left for last years Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition models to race Ski Doos around your boat. Maybe “The Danica” could wave the checkered flag while the race winner did a back flip off her Doo. It would be nice if she could finally get that close to a checkered flag.
So, absent the $1.6 billion, I’ll just have to get by the best I can in this New Year. Bummer. The S10 pickup will hit its 20th production date birthday, and I think I’ll splurge on some new shocks, some knobs for the radio, and maybe one of those deer-repellant sirens that you mount to the front bumper; when the S10 is moving it emits a high-pitched, high-frequency sound that deer mistake for the sound of “the rumbling stomach of a prehistoric deer-eating dinosaur.” William Shatner does the voice over on the commercial. So it must be true since he was Commander Kirk and is actually old enough to remember the sound of a hungry dinosaur’s stomach, which I’ve been told sounds a lot like James Earl Jones gargling, and we would have heard about it if there ever had been a deer/gargling James Earl Jones collision.
The garage for the S10 is coming along nicely. Here in North Central Florida there is a huge market for non-road-worthy tractor-trailer trailers. There is a big field about three miles down the “hard road” into town that is used as a used-trailer lot. Farmers buy them to keep their hay dry before they feed it to their cows. Apparently cows fed wet hay have more flatulence issues, which contribute to global Obama warming, and, in excess, can knock a gallon bucket of whole milk down to one percent skim in a heartbeat. Latrell and I bought three trailers for way less than the cost of building materials for a proper “codes approved” garage. In Florida “codes approved” has the same negative connotation as “Revenuers” in West Virginia, or “free dental checkups” in certain parts of East Tennessee.
We had the trailers delivered to the wooded lot beside the house where we’re “assembling” the garage. We put them behind a bunch of trees so we’d have some time to work on them before Lady M. found out what we are doing. She was enthusiastic about getting a garage, but I may have skimped on some of the details, and I’m sure she’ll know something isn’t right when she sees “Roadway Express” and “How’s My Driving? Call 1-800-who-cares” painted on the garage “walls”.
At some point this year, I’ll need to replace the tires on the S10. I did that trick of sticking a penny between the treads and seeing if I could see Lincoln’s head. This must have been one of those Lincoln-when-Lincoln-had-a-buzz-cut-pennies (very rare), because unable to find adequate space between the treads, or even treads for that matter, when the penny touched, it punctured the tire. Fortunately this was before Latrell quit chewing tobacco, so we were able to use a well-worked wad of Red Man to seal the hole. This also works for gaping chest wounds, as anyone who still has a copy of the 1912 Boy Scout Handbook would know. Somehow that didn’t make the cut for the later handbooks, which makes no sense given that the fundamentals of a gaping chest wound haven’t changed all that much over the last 100 years.
There is also a hole in the S10 exhaust which I haven’t been able to fix. It’s okay when it is cold, but when it heats up, the Red Man gets real gooey and makes an awful smell — you’d think they’d put a warning on the package telling you not to use it to repair leaky exhaust pipes, but with all the current tobacco warnings and lost sales, I’d imagine this is a growing part of the market they don’t want to alienate. This could be the next duct tape, after all, which if nothing else should make them salivate.
What I think I’ll do is fabricate some dual exhaust pipes that come up and out on each side of the cab, kind of like the big rigs do. I’d put a little flap on top to keep the rain out, as well as to allow me to cook hot dogs while I’m driving, by putting them on a string and dropping them down the pipes. I tried that on the old rear exit tailpipes, but if I hit the gas pedal too hard the hot dog with string still attached would shoot out the back, and when I’d stop to pick it up, often as not there would be dog, cat, raccoon, or hungry hitchhiker on the other end of the line. In some ways that was kind of exciting, although I don’t think it will ever take the place of fishing. Hmmm, street fishing …. They already have street rods, so how big of a leap is this?
So, long story short (you’re welcome!), there is plenty of clunker maintenance stuff to do for the rest of the year. This assumes, of course, that at some point I don’t actually win the Powerball Lottery, in which case I’ll donate the S10 to a local Boy Scout troop, along with the 1912 Scout Handbook, some duct tape and a couple pouches of Red Man. Every kid needs to know how to use common everyday items to plug a leaky tire, to say nothing of a gaping chest wound, which, if nothing else, has to be a great name for a heavy metal rock band.
Or not. •
