yes I know ...gary told me some years ago . I was just making a weak attempt at humour ....I'll get my coat
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How do you know when you've become an Old Fart?
- Thread starter YamadudeXS650C
- Start date
yes I know ...gary told me some years ago . I was just making a weak attempt at humour ....I'll get my coat
You reminded me of something, peanut. It was close to the end of my shift. I just finished bringing a VW Beatle to a body shop somewhere in Long Island, and was coming out of the Holland Tunnel when the boss called me on the CB. He said, "I got one more tow for you. Go to Cleveland, Ohio and pick up a single screw International Loadstar." That was close to 1200 miles back and forth. I was 20 and excited about taking a road trip. I went home, called my girlfriend to come along, and packed a cooler with some sandwches and sodas and got on rt 80, the main east-west rout across the US. We drove all night and probably ate some white crosses to do so. I got to the truck co. by mid morning and hooked up to the rear of this cab over tractor. My truck was not capable of lifting that truck from the front. I lashed the steering wheel straight with a nylon rope so it would trail straight behind the tow truck and got back on the highway, looking foward to getting a couple of days off when I got home. We pulled off at an exit for a bathroom break and a kid our age asked for a ride east. I told him he could get in the tow, because there was no room in the cab of my truck. He got in and I probably drove for 2 hours before we stopped for another break. The hitch hiker opened the truck door and crawled out. He also was white as a ghost, didn't say a word and gingerly wobbled away. We didn't realize what happened 'til I found the rope on the steering wheel stretched and loosened, causing the truck cab he was riding in to hop from wheel to wheel. The cab was facing away from me and all I could tell was that it was still on the hook. The road was bouncy enough not to notice the problem. I rattled that guy, probably for a hundred miles. Since it wasn't running, the air horns weren't working, even if he did think about using them. And he also must have been watching the rope getting looser...I have often towed cars in my youth but never a bike however I always carry a nylon rope or strap on my bike and scooter just in case .
I remember towing a non runner MGB GT that I had bought for spares with my own MGB GT about 50 miles.
I sat my friend Guy in the non runner and instructed him to use his brakes to slow me down at roundabouts and junctions so that we kept the tow rope taunt.
I lived in Bath Somerset at the time and anyone that knows Bath knows that it nestles in the bottom of a bowl like a huge crater. No matter which way you come in its a very long steep decent of about 2 miles .
When we finally arrived at my house I jumped out and walked back to congratulate my friend to find him white as a sheet . All the axles of the towed car were pouring acrid smoke and grease was oozing out of all the bearings . Apparently he had been standing on the brakes all the way down the hill in terror as I must have been doing about 30 mph down this steep hill and he had no power steering, no power brakes , horn or lights !
Yet another towing story; One sultry summer week when its good to ride late at night, Marlin and I planned to go to Seaside Heights, NJ after work on a Friday evening. We left a little late to avoid "The highway jammed with broken heroes" as Bruce calls it. (The Garden State Parkway) so we got on the road at 9ish and made good time, and, all of a sudden, two 750 Honda cafe bikes swarmed us like hornets and decided to ride with us for a couple of tolls before they looked back with a nod and buzzed off. We got to Seaside at around 11PM walked out to the beach to decompress, then to a boardwalk bar for a few beers and a slice. The beach is quite beautiful, here, with sugary white sand, and nice waves for body surfing, but the drop off is rather abrupt and the under tow could snatch you. But, the attraction to Seaside has always been the people. The girls strut their stuff in little bikinis and big heels with too dark tans, too much make up, too much hair, too long nails, too much jewelry, too loud voices,and too pushed up bras. The guys have too much body hair, too many tattoos and too many muscles. Some look like all they do is curls. Well, we stayed for the entertainment until 1:30AM then got back on the road. And since the road was empty we were moving. About a 1/3 of the way back we stopped at the Raritan toll, over the Raritan River. I was ahead and I heard Marlin's bike missing. I took off and got to the top of this huge 3 mile bridge before I realized I didn,t see Marlin's headlight in my mirror. I parked my bike on top of the hill and walked about a half mile back to Marlin. He was sitting there on the side of the road and realized, he should have topped off his fuel tank, but forgot to do so. So after 10 minutes I convinced him I was capable of towing his bike the 8 miles to a rest area where there was gas. But he would have none of the notion of me tying his bars to my rail. First we had to get to my bike, and we pushed his bike to the top of the bridge, I left my leather on and was sweating bullets at 2:30 AM. We had some 2 1/2 foot bungee cords and I tied a couple to my rail, and he wrapped them around his hand in order to release if something went wrong. In retrospect, that might have been really bad for his shoulder if the line jerked. Marlin leaned way over the bars, straining to hang on, and I towed him the 8 miles without incident. We got home close to 4 AM and I slept like a baby after pushing Marlin's '72 up that big hill.You reminded me of something, peanut. It was close to the end of my shift. I just finished bringing a VW Beatle to a body shop somewhere in Long Island, and was coming out of the Holland Tunnel when the boss called me on the CB. He said, "I got one more tow for you. Go to Cleveland, Ohio and pick up a single screw International Loadstar." That was close to 1200 miles back and forth. I was 20 and excited about taking a road trip. I went home, called my girlfriend to come along, and packed a cooler with some sandwches and sodas and got on rt 80, the main east-west rout across the US. We drove all night and probably ate some white crosses to do so. I got to the truck co. by mid morning and hooked up to the rear of this cab over tractor. My truck was not capable of lifting that truck from the front. I lashed the steering wheel straight with a nylon rope so it would trail straight behind the tow truck and got back on the highway, looking foward to getting a couple of days off when I got home. We pulled off at an exit for a bathroom break and a kid our age asked for a ride east. I told him he could get in the tow, because there was no room in the cab of my truck. He got in and I probably drove for 2 hours before we stopped for another break. The hitch hiker opened the truck door and crawled out. He also was white as a ghost, didn't say a word and gingerly wobbled away. We didn't realize what happened 'til I found the rope on the steering wheel stretched and loosened, causing the truck cab he was riding in to hop from wheel to wheel. The cab was facing away from me and all I could tell was that it was still on the hook. The road was bouncy enough not to notice the problem. I rattled that guy, probably for a hundred miles. Since it wasn't running, the air horns weren't working, even if he did think about using them. And he also must have been watching the rope getting looser...
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A little something more in line with the thread" How do you know you've become an old fart?" I just saw my sweetheart, whom I had a crush on when I was a young teenager, Marta Kristen that winsome blond from "Lost in Space" turned 74 this week...
You guys were certainly Born To Run.
Great story !
Speaking of knowing when you're an old fart: I caught myself looking at my pill box to see what day it was...
Wulfbyte
XS650 Addict
Now that is just too funny!Speaking of knowing when you're an old fart: I caught myself looking at my pill box to see what day it was...
That's why I made a chart, but you have to remember to make entries, there , too...
Now who's gonna set the clock AND keep me from adjusting it to fit my slant on reality? LOL
"If you build a foolproof pill dispenser, we'll just come up with a bigger fool..."
Myself all the way Don't need a weekly calendar LOLSpeaking of knowing when you're an old fart: I caught myself looking at my pill box to see what day it was...
One more from the road: First tow of the day, and nothing went right. An auto repair shop called my boss and he told me to pick up a customer car that couldn't be fixed and bring it to Parkway Scrap Metal in Clifton. They told me to lift the front of this Corvair Monza and pull the front tires The customer wanted them. So i did and took off from Englewood and got on rt 80 for a 20 minute ride. I was going 70 mph over the Hackensack River bridge and couldn't even feel the car on back of my 5 ton wrecker. Someone pulled up next to me and pointed to the car, someone else started beaping. I looked in the mirror and saw a smoke trail behind me. As soon as I could, I pulled over and went back to the car. Oily smoke was billowing out of the trunk lid. I opened it to see the engine completely covered with oil and the cooling fins of the engine all broken off and laying in the engine compartment which looked like a tossed salad. The engine was blown and the Corvair was stuck in gear with no front tires. So I jumped back in the truck and started hauling ass, not wanting to be spotted by a roving state trooper. They didn't take kindly to long hairs in gypsy tow trucks. People beeping at me waving, so I smiled and waved back, then the rear wheels locked up as the engine got even hotter and whatever oil remained lost the ability to lubricate. The tires screeched for a few minutes till they blew. Then I became concerned that the car might catch fire. I finally got to an exit and there was a small junk yard next to a body shop. Both were closed. I unhooked the smoldering hulk and left it in front of the gate and went back to the shop. No biggie. The car in scrap might have covered the fuel and my salary, but I could have easily brought back a stack of traffic tickets if I got nailed. Lucky for us there were no cell phones or surveillance cameras, and the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission was a bulky bureaucratic mess armed with file cabinets stuffed to the brim and IBM key punch cards. It would take years to trace the serial numbers on an abandoned car.
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Another fun story, Goldenboy !
....which reminds me of one of my own with a similar ending.
I was kart racing at the time, in the early 80's, and my "tow vehicle" for the machine was a Chevy Caprice station wagon, which I paid about 400 dollars for. It was rusty and the tranny was on its last legs. The 305 V-8 was smoking moderately, but I really wanted to get to the 4 days of racing at the Road America sports car track in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, a grand 4 mile long facility set out in the countryside.
The Caprice struggled a bit to make it from Syracuse ( i think I put a can of STP in it) , but I met my MidWest buddies in the paddock area where we camped
The kart just barely squeezed into the Caprice, which I had stripped of most of its interior. The nose would stick into the front seat about a foot, with the tailgate shut.
It was a great weekend of racing, and had to head home monday morning. Heading south on 94 towards Chicago, The 305 was sputtering and the tranny was starting to feel loose. So, i got off the highway somewhere around Kenosha, I think it was, worried about breaking down on a major thoroughfare. The old Chevy stumbled and gradually lost power. Imagining what the cost to tow this hulk and its cargo back to 'Cuse would be, I aimed it towards what boonies I could find, and called a friend at work. "Rescue me, PLEASE". He agreed to come that evening with his pickup truck. When my good buddy arrived, we pushed the Caprice down a side road, stripped it of what ID badges we could find, and then slid it into some brush.
Then we skee-daddled.
For months I would wake up at night, thinking I would get that awful call, "Sir, this is Officer Halstrom, and I have a vehicle here....."
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Attachments
That reminds me of "The Great Wild West Road Trip of 1987". Myself and two friends took a two week road trip across the country, in a '77 Caprice called "Jaws" (from the look of what was left of the grill... the P.O. had tried to climb a tree with the car...), staying at campgrounds along the way and seeing the sights. By the time we reached Las Vegas, "Jaws" was hurtin' bad. "Let's strip it, abandon it, and fly home" one of the guys said. One-way from 'Vegas to Syracuse was about $300.00 each. Two tires, an axle shaft and bearing, and a rear brake job was $330.00 (or $110.00 each). "Jaws" was driven home, without major incident, one of the guys drove it the rest of the summer, and it 'died' on the field of battle, at the "Great New York State Fair" demolition derby.
We would like to "redux" that trip, in our retirement, with a travel trailer, and as much time as it takes...
I just can't get enough of these recounts of past adventures when we were young and the world was new! Someone said everyone just eats up these stories of stupid shit we did when we were young. So, if you have a minute, I have a quintilogy of recollections which changed lives of people I knew.
1) The first will introduce you to most of them. There are two brothers, Duggie and Bruce. Then two of their friends, Derrick and Andy A. In a nutshell, they can be described as Dead Heads, who may not have even been aware of the existence of the Grateful Dead. But they embodied the spirit. One Saturday night, after drinking way much beer at the local tavern, they decided to do some damage, so they dreamed up a scheme, using the resources at hand. they filled their empty beer bottles with gasoline, stuffing rags into them and drove to the police station, lit them and tossed them at the front door. Without an escape plan they stumbled into the trees and bushes next to the building. (They should have been headed for Akron) So, the police just walked out and rounded them up like sheep and brought them into the station. For their efforts, they each got 6 months in the county and a year of community service.
2) Duggie, the younger brother was a little dumpy with long, frizzy hair pulled back in a pony tail. He had a scraggly mustache and always wore a brown suede fringed jacket , baggy jeans and suede boots. We called him Rocky Raccoon. His old man was getting on his case for keeping this 1956 Plymouth Bombardiere next to the house.He got it for free, and wanted to make it into a hot rod, but that's as far as he got. So once again, the four of them got together on a cold windy night in November and decided to drive it up to Stagg Hill in the Ramapo Mountains and dump it there, then hitch hike 15 miles back to Paramus. but, first they got some Buds, JacK Daniels, weed and THC, then the took the Bombardiere on its last cruise on 17 north to the New York border weaving along the highway, having a good old time.There was hardly any traffic on that Tuesday night, and when they got to where they wanted to dump the car, they were so wasted, they didn't want to get out of the warm car and try to thumb a ride when there was nobody around except the Ramapo Mountain People who would almost certainly not be very friendly, more likely hostile. So they decided to drive back, although they planned to get toasted and not have to worry about that part. Once again, poor contingency planning. It wasn't a short time before the front right tire went flat. They had no spare, even if anyone was in any shape to change a flat, so they drove on the tire down the slow lane 'till it came off the rim and they drove on the rim 'till it wore down to the brake drum and started to smoke as axle grease and brake fluid poured out. Duggie pulled into a gas station and the attendant came running out. Derrick rolled open his window, stuck his elbow out, flicked his cigarette and nonchalantly said to the attendant, "Hey, man. Wheres your air pump?" The guy spun around and ran towards the building like he was going to call the cops. Duggie took off again to the next exit and drove in a few blocks and they all scattered, leaving the old Plymouth in front of someone's house. Poor Duggie developed a bad case of osteo arthritis at 17 and by 19, which was the last time I saw him, he was pretty crippled up. Derrick went on to become a junkie. But there are three left. Bruce, Andy A., and Andy B.
3) It's amazing how someone's stars can colide and you can wake in the morning and your life can completely change before 11 AM. After serving his time and community service, Bruce tried to become more responsible, getting a job, getting married and buying a house. One morning, he went to work and passed out in the locker room of the trucking company he worked for. They took him to the hospital emergency room, and ran some blood tests. The doctor told him he was diabetic and would have to take insulin for the rest of his life. He went back to his job to tell them what happened, and they told him he couldn't drive for them and would be laid off because he could pass out and the state would take his licence, just like they took mine for 2 years, when I had seizures. Then, in shock, he drove home and up his driveway to open the garage. When he did he realized someone had stolen his dirt bike. He turns around to see his car roll down the driveway into the neighbor's car across the street. After giving the neighbor his licence and insurance info, he walked in the door and said to his wife," You'll never believe what happened to me this morning." She cut him off and said," Guess what, "I'm pregnant!" All before 11 AM. The marriage did not work out, the wife was irresponsible, ran away with his kid and a year later he got a call to meet her father at Newark Airport, where her father gave him his child and went back to Florida.
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4)Andy A., a wild child with Coke bottle glasses and too many teeth. Mild mannered, but lanky and strong as an ox and never knew when to stop drinking. After getting drunk he would go up to guys and get in their faces and just grin 'til they punched his face. But, he wouldn't fight back, just stand there and keep grinning even wider and get punched 'til a bouncer would separate them, and throw someone out. Andy A. took Andy B. to the bar, called "The Hole in the Wall", Because it was on rt. 17 and a truck went right through the front of the building. After being repaired, a mural was painted on the outside depicting the large hole and the inside of the bar where people were drinking at the bar and a band was playing. It was really a cool place. I stood right in front of Leslie West while he played his whole repertoire, one night, Then, Cheap trick was there on another night. Andy B. was my old girlfriends little brother who lost his licence driving his mom's Maverick into and taking out the corner of someone's house by their bedroom as they slept in the room. He had just left a bar and was drunk. He dropped his smokes on the floor of the Maverick and when he reached down to pick them up, he careened off a parked Buick Opal and took the corner of the house out. Then he tried to start the car to get away, not realizing the tie rods separated and the fan was in the radiator. The front wheels were pointed in opposite directions and the engine wouldn't start. he was so drunk, he kept trying to start the car, even as the homeowner was standing next to his driver's side window in his robe and slippers with his hands on his hips. The cops got there and that was that. Anyway Andy B. saw me there and asked me for a ride home, because he knew Andy A. was real drunk and knew how he could be. He had a beautiful Mercury Cougar and that night would be the end of it. Andy B. came home in my van and Andy A. took his friend home that was celebrating his last night before reporting for basic training for the army. They were going down a long hill into a curve a few blocks from my parent's house at over a hundred miles an hour when they took out two town trees and a fence. The Cougar has, what I believe is, a split frame. That car broke in half. They took it away in two pieces with a bucket loader. Andy A's passenger was killed instantly and Andy destroyed his knee. He spent two years in jail for manslaughter. Now, it would probably be ten.
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5) Andy B. was my riding buddy. We would go to bars and he wouldn't just look for women alone. They had to be with another guy. He would just sit on the opposite side of the girl from the guy and start up a conversation and start buying her drinks. She was more desirable to him if he took her away from someone else. He was a great mechanic and at a very young age, built mini bikes. I was surprised to hear his mom, in her Pennsyltucky hill billy twang proudly say," Oh, no, the police could never catch my Andy!" He would ride his fast little mini bikes through the neighborhood and someone would call the cops and they would try to catch him on numerous occasions, but he was able to ride through back yards and on to other blocks before the cops could get around them and always managed to elude them. I never saw anyone ride a Sportster like him. He rode it like a dirt bike. He was big, all shoulders and a shock of Swedish blond hair and crazy, buggy blue eyes. And he liked his Mudweisers, as he called them. We once drove our bikes on the "Long Path", a fire trail going six miles through the woods over rocks and roots to a lake. It parallels the Appalachian Trail through Harriman State Park. I was lunking along, spinning the tire and bottoming out on my Yamaha while Andy was burning wheelies with a '76 Sportster. I couldn't get too close as we rode single file on the trail as he was shooting rocks everywhere. He got a job with a small family owned company that bid on and purchased government surplus and used helicopters and used military jets. The owner lived in Long Island and flew to Teterboro every morning in his private helicopter. That was a stones throw from the shop where Andy worked. They would salvage parts to rebuild. The way he explained it, a fuel distributer for a turbine, new would cost over a hundred grand at the time, but a reconditioned one would only cost 60 grand. The engines could be forty years old, but they could be reconditioned and sold to foreign air forces as the jet engine was a basic design that hadn't changed. ( I'm not sure about that, now, in this day and age, though) They also had a contract to maintain the NYC Police Helicopter Fleet. Maintenance was done on the Intrepid, US Navy Aircraft Carrier Docked on the Hudson. They had a Chinese helicopter mechanic, who went by "CH". He had four brothers and said he was the black sheep in the family because he only worked 90 hours a week while his brothers worked over a hundred. Andy met a girl at a Halloween party in a bar we went to. She was dressed like Cat Woman. She would become his wife. At his bachelor party, we got him real drunk and chained a bowling ball to his leg.and he staggered into his house dragging it like a wrecking ball. His brother in law left with the key for the hasp lock on his leg and fell asleep, drunk. From that day on, Andy would go nowhere without a bolt cutters in his pick up truck. Then, on his wedding day, his cousin wrapped tin foil around Limburger cheese on Andy's exhaust manifold. You couldn't get near his pick up.You couldn't breath. There was no oxygen. That's when he finally got pissed! His company moved to Florida and Andy moved down with them. He had a beautiful, red '66 Chevelle 396 Supersport and was a little drunk, one night, and adjusting the carburators, when the hood fell on his head and knocked him out and he wound up being asphyxiated in his garage.
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