Birth of the Blue Missile
OK guys here is some more of the story that has been lagging behind the actual progress on the car. This bit is actually after the accident and before the motor shop, so insert it there.
About this time the CB thing wasnt making enough money and I got a job working on the Miami River as a welder/general construction hand on a research vessel called the Sea Searcher. The one thing that has to be mentioned here is that the company doing the retrofit I was working for, was owned by my step-sister.
I moved to an apartment on the river and had a 50 yard walk to work, so the lag time needed to replace the car was not a problem.
There was quite a collection of characters in the crew, Bill was in charge, my brother in law Mark thought he was also in charge. Stanley was second in charge along with a crazy crane operator, and a wood smith who worked in the wood shop below decks. There were another couple of laborers and myself. The ship was 110 feet long and had a twenty foot beam. It was a lighting research vessel that we were retrofitting for mineral nodule research. At the time I arriver demo had just started. I will say that the ship was well equipped to do the work, which was about to become key in my survival. Mark let it be known that I was the owners brother and that was all the crew needed to find me the dirtiest job on the ship just for fun. Stanley came up to me with a grin on his face and told me that it was time to demo out the bridge. He said first to go had to be the head (toilet) behind the bridge. It had become known that sometime after the water been shut off, someone had taken a dump and had no way to flush. So it had become my chore to take a bucket and empty the offending substance so the fixture could be removed. I was not about to be put off by this obviously objectionable task and decided to turn the whole thing around to become my revenge. I went and collected the tools needed to pull this off. I got the obligatory bucket and long rubber gloves. I got a soda can and cut the top off of it to ladle what had become all liquid out of the bowl. I then went to the shop area and asked if they had a NIOSH style mask for painting. They did, so I borrowed it. I donned the gloves and mask and with bucket in hand slowly made my way to the head. Because everyone knew the chore I had been assigned, they all started to follow me to see if I really was going to do it. I walked into the head put the bucket down, opened the lid of the toilet and stuck my masked face in and took a good and long whiff. Because of the mask I smelled nothing. I then proceeded to empty the bowl into the bucket and walk as slowly out of the area as possible. Im not sure why J but people seemed to run in the opposite direction and dive through hatchways to get out of my way. After I made my way off the ship I dumped the contents of the bucket into the porta potty washed it out at the dock and then took off the mask. They decided that that was enough fun for one day and they let me be about my business of cutting assorted steel out of the way of the new construction to soon start.
more on the ship to come, but please if you have any suggestions about the cowl let me know.
Andrew