Captainkirk's Duster project

Chapter 8


It didn'’t take long to get acquainted with my new friend. Oh, sure, there were limitations …(like how many quarts of oil one could carry in the trunk.) Seriously, though, it wasn'’t that bad. It really only burned a lot of oil when I romped on it. I tried to behave myself; tempered by the memory of what happened last time I threw caution to the wind; and the fear of heaving a rod through the side of the block on a high-time motor. Let'’s just say I was a little more ……civil. As for the car itself, truth be told, I liked it better than Red Ryder. The interior was certainly nicer, the buckets were like sitting in a La-Z-Boy. The car was not nearly as loud. It idled nicely and played well with others. And it was really a nice looking car; unfortunately just not as good looking as the li'’l red minx had been. I was spoiled, forever tainted by that stunning red paint job.
Speaking of which, Ol’' Red was long gone, hauled off to the crushing block, I presume, where old cars go to die. I tried not to think of it much; I had another car to concentrate on now, and school and work were really stepping up the pressure.
I’'d left the part-time job in the store and now had a better-paying factory job. Of course, it meant more hours, and studying became more of a chore.

“Can'’t we all just get along?” Rodney King
Roommates…. Ahhhh, what can one say about one’s college roommates? I truly appreciated their support during my crisis. But one‘'s patience has limitations.
I mentioned earlier that “Al” was not the sharpest tool in the shed. He was no dummy intellectually, but he had absolutely no mechanical skills whatsoever. I do not exaggerate. He was skimming through the classroom sessions by the skin of his teeth, but failing every shop class. By the time he got to “Basic Hand Tools and Shop Practices”, the writing was on the wall.
Now, the school policy was this; if you failed a class, having already paid for it, you were allowed to retake the class as many times as you saw fit to pass it, free of charge. Al put this policy to use beginning with Month 1 and faithfully following up with every class after. By the time we were 6 classes into the program, Al was still stuck in class # 3 and failing. Now, I ask you with all sincerity; HOW DOES SOMEONE FAIL “BASIC HAND TOOLS AND SHOP PRACTICES” 3 TIMES???????!!!!!!!!!
Answer: You have no mechanical skills whatsoever. But we covered that.
And this wasn'’t his only handicap.
He was lazy, and he was a slob.
Before you jump in here and remind me that this description matches 98% of all college students, let me counter by saying, You don'’t know Al.
First off, the guy wouldn’'t work. Nothing pisses you off more than being gone all day; first at school, then at work, and coming home to find your trail…er, errr, Mobile Home looking like Hiroshima a week after the blast; Al with that goofy grin watching TV with dishes piled up to the ceiling from breakfast…..his dishes, not ours…..we washed ours and put them away. And since he did'n’t work, he never had enough money to stave off his voracious appetite, so he would descend upon my poor, innocent staples like a plague of ravenous locusts. Beer, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs; he showed no preference and no mercy. Now remember, this is the guy who resembled a giant ground sloth. He would poke that proboscis into the fridge and Hoover out anything that wasn'’t bolted down. One time in particular; my sweetie had sent me a Betty Crocker Instant Brownie Mix box. I followed the directions dutifully, baking the mix in the box it came in, which magically turned into a brownie pan (how do they DO that?) and put them into the fridge to cool. By then it was oh-dark-thirty and I hit the books and before I knew it, time for lights-out. I dreamed about those freakin’' brownies all night. I lusted after them all day in class the following day, and at work afterwards. I walked in the front door that night with brownies on the brain. I went straight for that fridge like a shorthair on point, locked on to a big ringneck pheasant, opened it and……...
No beer.
No brownies.
No Al.
The last empty beer bottle stood on it'’s head in the overstuffed, overflowing wastebasket. Right next to the empty Magic Pan.
I stormed over to his side of the MH and knocked ( OK; pummelled) on the door. He opened it, blinking owlishly with his typical sh**-eating grin.
“"Where are my brownies?"” I shrieked hysterically.
"“Brownies……? Oh, yeah, yeah, I ate some. They were good”." He added the last, as if that would somehow make me feel better; that they were good. That he'’d ENJOYED them. And, some???? If he’'d left me even one…....
"“I"’ll bet they were, you freaking MORON! But then how would I know?”"
The last, fairly dripping with sarcasm.
“"Geez, you don’t have to get all bent out of shape.”"
I mumbled something about his ancestors and primates having a common thread and stormed off to bed….

Al never did laundry in addition to never doing dishes or cleaning. Maybe he thought we had a maid. Well,if we did, I never saw her. Never doing laundry meant always having dirty clothes on and the guy could really be a total assault on your olfactory sensors when it got right down to it. In the summer, the guy was positively ripe. He did manage to shower on occasion, though. Eventually, we had to have a talk with him about his bad habits. We ended up dividing the fridge into three regions; woe to he who crossed the boundaries. Dave finally got pissed enough to divvy up the dishes (which were mostly his anyway) into three separate stacks. He could never have a bowl of cereal because all the bowls would be piled up by the sink with hard, crusty cereal glued to the edges like concrete and filled with clumps of lumpy, sour milk; …all Al, eating our cereal. And to have cereal, one would have to wash the dishes first. I truly believe there was some devious, deep thinking behind this phenomenon.
The division of food and utensils seemed to work. Al eventually got a part-time job (finally!) to finance his junk-food monkey. This was a guy who could inhale a Super Size bag of Doritos and a gallon of milk at one sitting. This was OK, as long as they weren'’t my Doritos. This festive ritual was observed time and time again by Yours Truly. He ended up buying paper plates and bowls with plastic silverware so he could avoid doing dishes. This was fine by us as well. It kept the flies down.

Dave, now this guy was a piece of work as well. He was not a slob by any means. He did dishes, did his laundry, and kept his space neat and tidy. Dave'’s problem was twofold; first, he was a budding alcoholic. Second, he was insane.
Now, when I say "“insane"”, I mean he would do things that were just not right. Like, we'’d be eating dinner at the all-you-can-eat buffet and some couple would walk in; Dave would make some lewd or otherwise inappropriate comment towards the Better Half of this couple at Public Address Volume' which would naturally attract the Other Half’'s attention, who naturally had biceps as big as my thigh…. Maybe bigger. Perhaps on his way home from the Nautilus club or killing tigers with his bare hands at the circus.……
I don’t know this guy…. I’'m just sitting here with him. Never seen him before in my life...…honest. Please don'’t kill me too…!
There were some close calls. And then there was the driving. That was another reason I had to have my own car. A quarter of the time he was drunk. A quarter of the time he was reckless. The other half of the time he was drunk and reckless.
He found a new group of friends across town that were just like him, and began spending less and less time at the MH. This suited me just fine. His grades and attendance were starting to slip, and the writing was on the wall. Actually, the writing was on the fridge. One day I got home from work and found a note taped to the fridge saying he'’d moved in with the cross-town boys; all his stuff was gone (including the dishes). Good riddance. I saw him occasionally at school (we were in different classes now), and remained on good terms, but I was relieved he had left. I eventually heard an (unconfirmed) rumor that he and a couple of his roomies had been expelled for having pot on campus. Whether true or not, I never saw him after that.

Later down the line, Dave'’s spot on the sofa was taken by “Matt”. Matt was a curious individual; sort of a lanky, gangly, tall drink of water. He was OK at first; after a while he developed some peculiar peccadilloes that would chafe at me like a burr under my saddle. But at the time, he was a welcome relief from the insanity of Dave and the slothful sloppiness of Al. Matt drove an old, beat-up Ford F100 pickup. Though he was past the time of the Red Rocket, he became obsessed with my new ride, and eventually bought one of his own; a sky-blue Dart with twin scoops on the hood and a 318 that had seen better days. This motor later wound up in pieces in my living room (!), purpose of which unknown, for some mission which I don'’t believe ever was accomplished. This was much too big of a project for a working student to embark upon. I have a sneaking suspicion that the mission involved having the resident Mopar King lend a hand in building the motor and put it all back together for him; I probably would have, but by that time we were barely on speaking terms. But the Mopar Net flings wide, and it’'s not hard to envision why he would get caught in it, what with my car and magazines and all the stories and conversation. It’'s said that the most sincerest form of flattery is imitation…. We'’ll just let it go at that.
Anyway, Matt and I would have long conversations late into the night involving Mopars and 340’s and good stuff like that. We actually made it down to the XXXX street I mentioned earlier in this story a few times. After pondering about the name of this street for weeks now, a name finally popped into my head; Peoria. I’'m not sure if this is correct; but that'’s the name that popped into my head so we'’ll go with it.

Tulsa was not the way I’'d envisioned it; Hicksville. It was different, to be sure. Yeah, the Okies were laid back, for sure. But they were cool, too. If you were into music and guitar (I was) Tulsa was a sort of back-alley Nashville with a whole sub-culture of budding musicians and such. You'’d go to a guitar store to buy a pack of strings, or browse and drool, and some guy would walk in with his wife and kid and pick up a guitar and start picking and just blow you away. And I’'d be thinking; this guy probably works in a factory and has an everyday mundane life with his family, and he could blow half my guitar heroes off the stage. And it was no big deal. The city was full of guys like that.
So it was with the car culture. Everyone was a shade tree mechanic. Hopping up cars was like baling hay to those people; they did it well and with little effort. And the interesting thing was, Tulsa was a Mopar Mecca back then. Oh, sure, you’d see your Bow Ties and your Found On the Road Dead’'s, but what amazed me was the number of Mopars, and the pristine condition many of them were in. This became glaringly apparent the moment we hit Peoria on a Saturday night.

…Beyond the Palace, hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard // Girls comb their hair in rear-view mirrors and the boys try to look so hard…
Bruce Springsteen; Born To Run

This was Peoria on a Saturday night. Some of my mental snapshots; a Screaming Yellow ‘'Cuda with it’s strobed black stripes speaking volumes without saying a word; no hood and dual 660’s stretching for the moon on the twin mountain peaks of a tunnel ram, dual velocity stacks perched on top as if to announce to the world that this was truly A King. A Plum Crazy hemi-powered rag top ‘'Cuda that might dispute His Lordship. A dynamic duo consisting of an AAR ‘Cuda and a T/A Challenger' parked nose-to-nose in a shallow Vee in a parking lot, their glass hoods propped up by 2 X 4’s and showing off their sets of triplet carbs like proud parents; both red, like two brothers, you could see the Mopar family resemblance; while the owners sipped liquid courage from long-neck bottles. The chrome. The smell of raw, unburned gasoline mingled with exhaust. The rumble and thunder. They would pace back and forth up and down this stretch of hot tarmac like a prowling pack of wild dogs, snarling and snapping at each other….. occasionally one would lunge at another, tires squealing, engine snarling and the acrid smell of burned rubber would sting your nostrils. Guys were shouting at each other through open windows and laughing, music was in the air. It was hot, it was Summertime in Tulsa, and Young America was on the prowl.
What was truly amazing was, there were no cops. At least, I saw none. These folks seemed to know just how far to push it, and no further. I saw no fights, or anything like that, just a bunch of motorheads gathered together in a common cause steeped in Sun Super 260 100+ octane gasoline (yes, they were selling it there; at one of the gas stations on Peoria.) A big black Polara 440 rumbled down the street like an overgrown bodyguard, the big block barking out it’s deep rumbling thunder. Schools of Barracudas trolled up and down while Challengers sparkled and shone under the streetlights. There were Dusters, Darts and Demons. A white Super Bee with what appeared to be open headers would prowl up and down and then park by the T/A Brothers. After a little bit he’'d get up and do it again. It was a magical place in a magical time. How could you see and experience this without being affected; without being infected?
Little wonder Matt bought the Dart.