I was in the process of raising a
family when I was involved in my accident. I was run over by a young man
driving a jeep the day before he was to graduate from High School. I was
riding my ten speed bike back from the park where I’d go to run every day.
I won’t bore you with the details other than to share with you that I was laid
up in the Hospital for two years, and losing my left leg at the shin was a
distinct possibility. I kept it, ultimately, but it was a chore. I think I had
more than 60 operations of various and sundry kind, but, hey, who’s counting.
Upside for me is that I win the best scar contest every year at our annual Memorial Day family reunions. I've beat out my Uncle John’s Ax blade across the skull hands
down now for the past 22 years running. But that’s a story for another day. I
guess when a car guy gets laid up in the hospital for a long
period of time, that same car guy might attempt any task, however impossible, to make
time pass. I was one of those guys. Let me tell you I had so much time on my hands I
literally laid in my hospital bed one day and watched the seconds tick away on a clock
for 24 straight hours. I’m not sure of what you definition of boredom might be,
but for me, that day was mine. I read everything I could get my hands on,
and I mean everything. I read labels, books, magazines, charts, graphs, statistics, surgical procedural books and just about anything else that wasn't nailed down, and a few that were. I’d even read
automotive assembly manuals, my favorite. I'm not talking "Hot Rod" or "Car Craft" car magazines, those were a given. I mean the manuals used on the auto assembly lines when cars were being produced in the plants. It was great reading for a serious car
dude, even a crippled one like myself, but only if I could convince my wife or
any of my friends to bring me one or more. I remember getting the assembly
manual for a 1969 Camaro and being so glad I thought I might cry when it was
laid in my outstretched hands. I think I might have even hugged it longer than
I hugged my dear wife upon both’s arrival to my bedside.
For
those of you reading this (and that would be zero) an assembly manual is the
book that a car manufacturer would give to the various stages of
construction when a car was making its way down an assembly line. Not
the whole book, mind you, just the parts and pages pertaining to the job at
hand. These books were to show the assembler how to do a specific job, say how
to properly install a headlight and how tight to torque it to the headlight
housing assembly or how many shims to put in a fender for proper alignment,
if that be the station where that particular job was being done. Some
genius took all of the different pages and made them into three inch thick assembly manuals
for the consuming public. You might think that would be reading akin to
watching grass grow or cars rusting or watching golf on TV, but some smart dude
(or Dudette) smacked a home run when he thought it up, and unfortunately, it wasn't me. Assembly manuals
are big business and I can attest to the nature of an assembly manual,
its egg head reading and only for the exceptionally bored or engineers…like
I was (bored I mean) on my two-year vacation at the Georgia Baptist Hilton. I had a project car waiting me back at my house. It was a great car,
a 1974 Z-28. It had the bad-assed 350 LT-1 motor, by then designated as an
L-82 Corvette engine due to the lower compression pistons, smaller cam
shaft and cast iron intake manifold. It still made a
very respectable 290 horses (underrated) and was second only to the Super
Duty 455 engine that found its way into the Z-28′s ”F-Body”
brother at General Motors, the Trans-Am. I had bartered and traded a
rebuilt small block Chevy engine, a tach-drive distributor (keep reading) and a four speed
shifter out of a 67 Corvette even for the car.
I
was a poor young Dad with two kids and a wife and a mortgage, but I had
always had a hot-rod car of some sort and this one was mine. It needed
everything re-done, and I had the time to do it, seeings I was busted
up from my accident. I could only work on the car when I was at home, which was
rare. So I broke the car up into segments to work on, Engine, transmission,
interior, suspension, paint & body, so I could hopefully get the car
running again sometime in the future. The four speed was purdy much shot
and it needed a rebuild. I had already ordered the rebuild kit, with all bearings
and gaskets included, and I had made a plan to get the transmission rebuilt.
All I needed was to figure out a way to get the Muncie 4-speed into my hospital
room. I contacted one of my car buddies and told him about my plan. Curt, the
dude in question, said let him worry about how to get the 4 speed into my
room and just concern myself with getting well. The following week, he said he
had a plan worked out, and just sit back and watch it unfold. I guessed it
would be under cover of night and involve breaking and entering, just this time
it would be to leave something and not to take something away. I braced myself
for the worse, as the dudes I hung out with were entirely different from
the guys I used to work with. I was a banker by trade but a car-dude at heart.
Car guys usually were a little rougher around the neck than the traditional
button down guys you’d meet while under the employ of a Federally Insured Banking Operation. On occasion, I’d get the chance to intermingle my car
buddies and my work acquaintances, over beer or lunch, and both usually said
the same thing:
“You
don’t really hang out with those people do you?”
It
was like living two lives, really, the one that liked going to NASCAR races at
Atlanta Speedway, and the Drags at Commerce Drag Strip on the red neck side of
life. I also went to Football and Baseball games with my hi-brow friends
and our customers, all under the guise of expanding my business base at the
bank. The Bank paid for all the trips to the pro ball games, but the races were a
hell of a lot more fun, and considerably more expensive. If the truth were known, the bank
would have done a lot better spending its money at the races. A heck of a
lot more business and loyalty could be had just for buying a guy a few beers,and I
even suggested it once in a bank meeting with my superiors. Let me tell you
they looked at me like I had just grown another eyeball or said something about
the advantages of Credit Unions, akin to cussin’ in front of your grandma at church as far as banking circles went.
The
following Tuesday afternoon, when Curt got off from work, he called me and
told me the transmission would be delivered that evening and just play
along with the charade. I simply told him “OK” and waited with bated
breath and restricted sphincter, a saying my Dad used when he was being
sarcastic, but fitting here as sneaking a 125 pound 4-speed transmission
that was a good three and one half feet long was going to be a stretch. Seven
O’clock rolled around and just as I thought the boys might have decided to back
down from the delivery, I heard a small commotion out by the nurses desk, not
gunfire or rattling sabers just the commotion that accompanied a crowd of
folks in small confined area.
My
nurse came to the door and told me “Jim, you have a number of visitors, you
want them all at once or a few at a time?” I was somewhat taken aback, but told
her to send ‘em all at once. My buddy Curt had contacted the bank I
was working at before my accident, told a few of my banking buddies that
they were planning a visit. He also told a number of my car buddies a visit was
planned also and what was going down. the first person to walk through the door
was Curt, holding a birthday cake, with thirty one candles lit on top, two
of my other buddies carrying a big box wrapped in the funny papers with Duct
Tape securing the corners. I assumed it was so the it's contents wouldn't fall out of
the end of the “present” or bust through the bottom of the box. It was
pure genius.
By
the way, it wasn't my birthday.
More tomorrow! I'm gonna wrap this hospital crap up.
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