"I was just following the GPS and…"
(# Close to Home by John McPherson for April 15, 2020)
Have you ever received one of those calls?
CSA
(# Close to Home by John McPherson for April 15, 2020)
My girlfriend told me her engine was going chug-a, chugs-a. So I told her to wait until I got there. That was her description of a crank, no start condition.
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One of the funniest episodes on the radio.show “Fibber McGee and Molly” radio show which aired in the 1940s and 1950s had Molly driving the car with a friend along. They heard a clatter under the car. Molly stopped the car and both of them wrestled a big iron disk into the car. Molly was sure it was part of the car, but she was certain McGee could fix it. Molly got the car home and McGee thought it was the flywheel. Molly didn’t agree because she had seen flies in the car. McGee gets the car apart and can’t find where the part belongs. While he is working on the car, a police officer shows up and demands that McGee return the city’s manhole cover.
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But the tire is only flat on 1 side!
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Before I married my trophy 
bride, 36 years ago, she was driving an ugly gold 74 Oldsmobile Omega (I thought it was a Tempest, but my memory is bad enough to be corrected by her) 350 V-8 4bbl. with a couple dents and a little rust.
She knows, because I’ve repeated it several times, that the car is one reason I married her, no joke. I knew she was frugal by continuing to drive that old iron and I would rather inherit that beast with her, rather than a newer car with payments, some credit car debt, and college loans (which neither of us ever had).
Anyhow, apparently (She should have never told me this) before we met, she had put diesel fuel in the Omega (designed for gasoline). Okay, I guess, filler openings back then didn’t restrict diesel nozzles. (?) She had to have the tank removed and the fuel system flushed. Okay, I get that…
…but twice? Rinse and repeat. She did it a second time, but the car survived and served our marriage well for many years, nearly a decade later.
Long story, longer. We both had fairly long work commutes, each about 36 miles (one-way) in opposing directions, every work day, for years. She drove “her” car and I drove “my” car.
One day I “borrowed” “her” car to run a distance to a store at night. I pulled onto the rural highway and hit the bright headlight beams, “not too good,” I thought. I tried low beams, much worse. I made my trip at reduced speed so as not to out drive crappy lighting.
In the driveway at home I switched on the headlights, climbed out, and walked to the front of the car, The low beam on the passenger side was dark. I switched to high beams and checked. The high beam on the driver side was out. I put 2 headlights on my “honey do” list.
Inside, I asked my wife what was up with the lights? She said, “Oh yah, they haven’t seemed very right to me, lately.” Bless her little heart. We are still very happily married, by the way and she is still frugal. We are best friends.
CSA
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Yeah I told this before but back in school my future FIL bought my wife a 61 Plymouth to use. He said to be sure to keep the oil filled. On a 90 mile drive home it was smoking like crazy all the way home. When my FIL checked it, he found that the oil was full-up to the top. Hee hee. I do the car servicing in our house.
A neighbor had to call his wife to bring the other pickup truck, he fell out of the older F150 lwhile backing down a launch ramp and the whole works slid into the lake, still running. She still had that smirk on her face about a month later when we were hearing the story.
Gee and I was going to buy a boat and get a fishing license. Put a life vest on before launching?
My wife went to visit our daughter in TX once and called me when she arrived there; roughly 425 miles later.
“The car is overheating”.
OK, when did that start?
“About 30 miles from our house”.
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As I recall he fell onto the ramp and the truck continued into the lake without him, trailer still attached. A Backup camera of some sort would have saved the trouble (leaning out the door to see what the trailer was doing)
Or a good set of properly adjusted mirrow’s.
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I was home and my wife was out shopping with our 56 Desoto.
She called home from a pay phone and said the car won’t go.I asked her if the engine started. Her reply was that she did not know anything about cars.
She was at a discount dept. store on a bus route that went within 2 blocks of our house. It was bitterly cold so I dressed in many layers of old clothes and stuffed a lot of tools into a large portable toolbox. When I got there I immediately saw the problem. She had parked on top of a sheet of ice covering a large puddle. While she was in the store, the weight of the car broke through the ice and the ice had refrozen trapping the right front wheel. The only tool I needed was the bumper jack to break the ice again to free the car.
Reminds me of getting stuck once, one wheel drive, jacked the car up pushed it forward so it fell off the bumper jack, picked up the pieces and drove on.
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Yep back when they actually had heavy bumpers you could jack on. I thought it was really an improvement when they put slots in the bumpers for the jack. Much safer.
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Way back in 1967 I was in a Little Caesars Pizza® joint that was near my home and where I attended high school.
Anyhow, I had heard from a friend that they were having trouble attracting and retaining delivery drivers, so the owner bought 2 brand spanking new 1967 Volkswagen Beetles to be used by the delivery boys. The thinking was that if the vehicles were furnished, rather than provided by the employees, perhaps it would be easier to recruit and keep drivers. Good idea!
However, this was the sixties and I had heard that delivery drivers of the times were known to smoke some funny stuff to make the deliveries more fun. Apparently it was.
While I was in the store I could hear a loudspeaker that amplified incoming calls for pizza orders and the staff could communicate with callers without stopping what they were doing, very 60s high tech!
In came one call. It was a delivery boy who was driving one of the brand spanking new VWs and he laughingly said, “Ha, ha, … Hey, I was making a delivery and the bug grabbed onto a tree and won’t let go! Ha, ha, ha…”
After that, good help was hard to find and hard to keep. When teenagers have to provide their own cars they don’t last long.
CSA
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They probably ate a slice from each box while they were high on deliveries.
I delivered pizzas in 67, we were furnished 6 cylinder wagons, froze my feet off. Studded tires were legal then, no problem delivering through snow storms.
driver, 100 miles away- “the A/C is blowing warm.”
me- “Is the switch switched to cool?”
driver- “Nevermind…”
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True story, driver pulled out of our Buffalo Terminal going tp Montreal. Our shop got a call from him only about a mile away. He was afraid to keep driving because the trailer was leaning so far to one side that he was afraid it was going to tip over.
Mechanic took the shop truck and went to see what was wrong. It did not appear to be leaning, but the mechanic checked the tires and springs anyway. He asked the driver to start it up and drive a few feet in case the tires were sitting in a hole.
He told the driver the trailer was not leaning and ge could not find anything wrong with it.
THe driver said Oh yeah! Just get up in here and look in the mirror and tell me that!
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