No Brakes

Autumn has continued to pester me about fixing up the Oldsmobile. This weekend she suggested I take it out of the garage and at least give it a wash as it's been sitting in there collecting dust for the past couple of years. Problem is since the motor is half torn out of the engine compartment I'd need help pushing it out to the driveway and even more help getting the car garaged again. It's a heavy beast. I agreed to take her up on the suggestion because I didn't want to make Autumn mad. Lately that's been especially easy to do.

I called Senor 23 and asked him to come by and help us muscle the car outside. He showed up not long afterward and I hopped into the driver's seat. The interior was musty and filled with cobwebs. It really had been years since the last time I sat behind the wheel. No motor meant no brakes. This was going to be dicey, all I had to stop the car was it's parking brake. It would have to do. Putting the Olds in neutral and releasing the parking brake I gave Senor 23 a go ahead to start pushing. He was standing directly in front at the bumper. Gently, the car rolled backwards. I felt the rear tires cross over a bump which meant I was on driveway concrete. The trunk deck edged downwards and I picked up speed. Too much speed. With my left foot I jammed on that parking brake- and nothing happened. Backing down the driveway faster and faster I had no way to stop the car. Nooooooo!

My driveway opens up on to a very long, busy residential street. People often speed on down the road even though the limit here is 25mph. I was doomed and I knew it. In a second or two someone was going to slam into the Oldsmobile as it burst into the lanes or I was going to sail clean across to the other side of my street and split a parked car in half. Senor 23 could tell from the look on my face that I was panic stricken but there was nothing he could do. There was no way he could stop this beast. If he tried, the momentum and weight of the car would simply knock him down to the pavement and roll right over him. He'd be dead for sure.

As I jammed into the road I got seriously lucky. There was no traffic. I did the best I could steering like a mofo while coasting in reverse. Over the yellow line I went. I angled my path so that I narrowly missed two parked cars and gently came to a stop on sidewalk curb. Whew.

We pushed like hell at the rear bumper and got it back to my side of the street. With more help we were able to get it partially up the driveway. I stuffed two wheel blocks under the rear tires. It wasn't going nowhere now, but when I was done screwing around with this monster I'd need even more help to get it all the way up into the garage. Before it got much later in the day I grabbed my phone and started calling buddies to come over. I explained the situation and had three more guys show up at the house. We were going to need that many people at a minimum.

Washing the Olds took a while. When we were done I stepped back to take a good look at it. I'd forgotten how nice the light metallic blue paint job looked. My next door neighbor commented that he thought my car was gray. Heh. That's how dusty it had become. Autumn took a few pictures of the car sitting out there on the driveway after it was all cleaned up looking sharp. Then the six of us pushed it into the garage and called it a day.

* from left to right: Senor 23, Devil-T, factory peasant, Biskits, Adult Baby Diaper Man.