I loved my Mom and so did everybody else. My and my sibs’ attitude toward her was because of the obvious: we were her sons and daughters and she was soft and beautiful and sweet to the core. The reason everybody else loved her was because she constantly offered us up as yard slaves.
One time I was in deep, deep rapid eye movement underneath warm and thick covers in a cold room and the only skin exposed was my slobbering mouth. Momma poked me in the ribs. “Get up!" she said. “You gotta go shovel the ice off of Mrs.
I-Forgot-Her-Name's’ walkway. She can’t get her mail or the newspaper and she feels trapped.” It was eight in the dad-gum Saturday morning. “I told her you’d be right on over.”
So I grabbed a shovel and while I hiked up the hill to Mrs. Whoever’s house, I told myself that it’d be okay if I whacked her big, fat behind with it. I got there and I put her mail and her paper on her cute little front porch with its rocking chairs and a stupid little floor mat that said “Welcome” on it.
I attacked the front walk madder than a Russian hornet and jammed several cold fingers in the process. I spewed a string of precise adjectives and decided that when I finished the job I’d just walk home. I wouldn’t even talk to the old woman who was probably in there watching me and making sure I didn’t miss a single spot.
When I had gotten the last slick spot off the steps, I went home and pretty much forgot about it. Later, Mom called me inside and said “Mrs. Whoever just called and she couldn’t believe you didn’t ask for any money. I can’t believe you didn’t ask for any money! She was so grateful she started crying and …...”
I, well, uh….
“She made me promise you’d go back up so she could pay you for what you did.”
So.
When I got there she was at the door leaning on a cane. “There aren’t many boys these days who’ll give up a Saturday morning to help an old lady.” She really was trapped. And small and pitiful. But she was clean and sweet and clear. “Thank you so much. Is this enough?”
Five dollars was an awful lot of money to a 10-year-old in the late sixties. Was that enough?
On the inside I’d been a complete jerk, but on the outside I was all warm and fuzzy now. I had major conflict and huge guilt. The angel alter ego asked, “Reckon if you’re heart’s good something as good just might happen?” Well, it was powerful medicine. Do something nice and be in somebody’s space if they ask you to and you might find a jewel there.
I had five bucks and a new friend. Cool. The same thing happened to Tim once, but it’s a much better story.
Tim’s a better person than I am. He did as told without inner complaint. However, Fred Sanford is in the veins of me and all of my brothers and Tim’s Saturday morning treasure was of a different sort. Instructed to spring-clean another old lady's garage, he found years of pack-rat stuff inside it. About halfway through the job, though, a prize began to emerge. Like a T.E. Lawrence Brough Superior in a long-forgotten barn out in a field, among the assorted garbage emerged a Ford Fairlane convertible pedal-car.
Tim had to have it because on a previous mission of mercy, he’d acquired a serviceable horizontal shaft Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine. See where he was going? Have a motor and wheels with a cool car wrapped all around it and you, son, could travel. I had some vice grips that he needed and Battle had a jig saw. On this venture, we were all in.
We’d fix it up and slick our hair back and drive over to Tarvers’ Esso and get him to “Fill ‘er up!” I looked into the clouds and saw myself with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in my blowin’ in the wind T-shirt sleeve as I eased on down the boulevard. Cool and slick as a minnows’ privates is what I’d be.
Oh the possibilities! Enthralled, we three rocket scientists dove into the construction of what would surely be the world's smallest and coolest gas-powered Ford convertible ever.
We rigged the engine between the two back wheels and Tim talked Mom into driving him down to Barnes and Rhodes on Broad Street for all of the necessary hardware. Our transmission system was more than just straight-forward VW Beatle smarts. It was a fool-proof pulley to pulley and fan belt in between design of, uh, well it was a design.
Since none of us had ever driven a car, we saw no need for a mechanical clutch and we had an idea for that. Our throttle assembly was coat hanger wire attached to the carb so that the motor ran wide open all the time. Throttles and clutches were a distraction anyway, we reasoned, and without all of that irritation Tim could concentrate on driving the machine. Besides, the whole show would be finished all the quicker if we just didn’t mess with those things.
To slow the vehicle from what we figured would be warp, we selected another fool-proof design: Sears loafers. This was a Fred Flintstonian derivative, but it was superior because they didn’t have loafers in the Stone Age.
A remaining concern for our ride was the seat assembly. We eyeball measured the total height of the motor and rigged a piece of one by four across two vertical struts that we’d previously manufactured with the rest of our tool kit that was more like a box of worn out butter knives. The bottoms of the struts were rickety-tached to the rear of the frame, but the assembly wound up about one inch too short. See, the spark plug had been removed when we took our measurements and when in place, it stuck up too high. This problem was easily resolved by drilling a hole in the seat.
With our clutch, throttle and brake systems, we realized that Tim would have to drive all the way to Tarvers’ on the first try, but that was okay. We must get to Tarvers’. With a cigarette.
As you will recall, I said we had a solution to the clutch dilemma. Battle. Our idea was for him to pick up the rear end and for me to start the motor and set the irreversibly on throttle. Once everything was warm and swimming, Tim, holding on to the steering wheel, would sit down and Battle-clutch would gently engage by easing everything down and onto ground contact. We had a plan.
In cars the electrical energy going to a plug can be as much as 10,000 watts or volts. I’m not intelligent enough to know what watts and volts are, but while a lawn mower engine isn’t as beastly as a V8, I know first-hand that its spark will smack you clear into next year. Next time you cut the grass, grab the spark plug while the motor is running and you will have been initiated. If you’re over 50 you might be dead.
We were new to spark plug theory and techniques.
Engine mounted, fan belt attached, throttle set, brakes assembled, we deduced that we were ready. With anticipation and huge fanfare between our ears alone, the vehicle was transported to the tip top of Franklin Road. We took a breath and time stopped. Battle, being trained as the clutch, did what he was supposed to do and hoisted the rear end of the machine. I, being a trained starter/throttle setter, did my part and fired up the motor with methodical professionalism. We were professionals.
When the Briggs stopped coughing and spitting and settled into full-tilt-red-line, Tim screamed “YOU READY?”
I remember Battle was sporting blue jean overalls and I don’t know what I was wearing, probably bell bottoms, but I know we both felt naked as the gravity of this stupidity began to dawn. Tim was wearing shorts and the factory didn’t issue socks for the brake system. Only then did it occur to me that he may have to ride that thing until he ran out of gas and since we were professionals, the tank was topped off. I could feel the same vibes from now straining Battle, but regardless, we gravely nodded our readiness.
With the Briggs running flat out, Tim sat down on the flimsy seat and we immediately learned that the Battle clutch system had a flaw. It could not hold up the screaming motor and the car and the human all at the same time. The planned gentle engagement was more like a thwack. Still, we hoped for the best.
Timmy wasn’t exactly ready either and when he and the sleek machine banged onto the pavement, the wheels spun and burned for about three feet and then the whole thing shot off down the hill like a Chinese sidewinder. With his tongue firmly in the grip of the left side of his head and his feet violently splaying east and west he flogged at the thin air. In this manner, there were no brakes.
The initial shock of everything hitting the ground also caused seat assembly trauma and just enough collapse so that our pilot's as yet meatless fanny was resting on the screaming spark plug. As he tried to relieve his left cheek of voltage or wattage, the test vehicle tried to fly. We could see every speck of Timmy’s fiber screaming “DEPLOY BRAKES NOW!!!!!” He did and he did and he did, but they didn’t.
While it wasn’t very funny at the time, nobody has ever really laughed or lived unless etched in their memory is witness to someone receiving rear-end voltage while deploying sockless loafer brakes. I’m convinced the spark plug to buttocks factor is why Tim still retains things rear-end and is so successful in business. The harder he tried to stop, the harder the little two and a half horse Briggs tried to go. He even tried to stand straight up and deploy while holding on to the steering wheel for dear, sweet life, but that didn’t work either.
Thankfully, the act of sitting on a spark plug while the motor is running is the same as pressing the kill button on a leaf blower. The electrics are grounded and if you sit on it long enough the motor will die. Just before Tim hit Scenic Highway and major traffic, his fanny having been spanked three hundred times, the contraption expired. Only then what remained of the breaking system began to perform as designed and the whole thing stopped.
Battle and I ran down the hill to find Tim white as a ghost. We retrieved our machine and quietly discussed fixing and re-designing, but a scared and unspoken “What if?” question was heavy on our minds. We decided we needed a real clutch and a real throttle and some real brakes but what we really needed was a real shot of whiskey. I was scared snotty.
That night Tim quietly extracted his motor from our Fairlane and Battle and I asked no questions. We understood.
But ever the optimist, Tim then found a Popular Mechanics that showed various ways a man could mount a small motor on a bicycle. There were all sorts of configurations, but the coolest design called for a Schwinn Stingray where the motor was jerried under the curved bar that went from the seat post to the steering yoke. It kept the ape-hanger handle bars and the cool banana seat that made the Stingray famous. Pretty cool idea really.
But the Briggs was to be, like, between a guys’ legs. And all that held up the banana seat was a spindly tube of cheap steel that was supposed to look like a sissy bar. If it broke the spark plug would be right there in close proximity to, well, you know I just can’t go there.
But then, everything mystical aligned and there came to being a thing called a QA-50 that you could actually afford. I got a lime green one and no longer needed a Fairlane or a Stingray with a red-hot Champion dangerously protruding into my netherly tender mercies. My sincerest hope now is that my progeny will one day understand the dire significance of the brilliance of their savior, Soichiro Honda, whose spark plugs pointed in the other direction.
Savage Glascock
savageglascock@gmail.com