South County Vehicle Retrieval

Canopener came by late this afternoon to fetch the Starfire. I expected he was going to show up in my driveway with a large tow truck or some variety of car hauler. Instead he brought a pickup truck with a small tow trailer. I guess he grabbed whatever was handy from his company's available equipment. Leaving the truck blocking one lane of road he hopped in to the Oldsmobile and pulled it's parking brake. Putting it in neutral he was ready to back out down the driveway. I warned him about having no brakes. Canopener's attitude was, it ain't nothin. Heh. I pushed against the car's front bumper and away he went. Rolling out to pavement he pulled hard on the steering wheel and hooked smoothly past his tow rig coming to a slow easy stop. Good job.

Now was the difficult part. We didn't have any extra help from anyone. Our mission was to push that heavy solid American steel up on to the tow trailer. Both front wheels had to be planted directly above the trailer's axle. It had ramps leading up and over but they were short and steep. Canopener straightened out the front tires by reaching in through a window. In order to pick up speed and gain momentum pushing that bastard we left a long distance between us and the trailer. Hopefully both of us had enough strength to power on through.

Canopener said, "You ready?"
"Yep."

Simultaneously both of us pushed as hard as we could from either side of the rear bumper. Walking, then running I felt the front end rise upwards towards the sky for a moment. Then an unbelievable amount of force rushed back against my arms. The Starfire's hood leveled out. Rolling backwards towards us Canopener and I got the fuck out of the way. Neither one of us wanted to be crushed. Our second attempt was no better. My beast of a dead car would not cooperate. Gently rolling to a stop past us we regrouped at the bumper for one more try.

We failed. Both of us were getting tired.

Canopener stood there in the street thinking. Then he turned to me and said, "Now we're gonna do what you're NOT supposed to do."
"What's that?" I suspected something bad was about to happen.
"Let's push it up against the trailer."

As soon as we reached it and the car's front tires were barely making contact with ramps, Canopener put the Oldsmobile into park and he engaged the brake. With a big, shit eating grin on his face Canopener looked at me saying, "Don't worry. This is going to be FUN. You'll like it, but you should stand back."

Uh oh. I ran over to the sidewalk.

Jumping into the cab of his pickup truck Canopener started the engine, threw it in reverse, and buried his foot into the accelerator pedal. Both rear wheels of the truck began cooking off like a funny car at a quarter mile drag strip. Clouds of thick, pure white smoke belched out of each wheel well rising past trees. The squealing sound coming from those tires was truly horrible. It echoed through my neighborhood with such ear splitting volume I anticipated any second everyone on the block would come running outside to see what the commotion was. And the smell, nasty. It was like someone had just incinerated ten thousand rubber bands. Inching backwards the trailer ramps scraped along pavement like a spatula and scooped up both of the Starfire's front tires. Lurching once or twice it creeped up and over until finally coming to rest in the trailer's grip. Canopener did it.

Stepping off the sidewalk I met Canopener at his truck's trailer hitch. In his best white trash hillbilly voice and with a smile on his face he said, "That's the way we do things in South County."

After securing the Oldsmobile with chains and heavy straps were cinched down over it's front tires Canopener drove home. I watched as he hauled that beauty of a classic ride down the street until he made a left turn and disappeared from view. Thinking to myself, I was happy and also sort of sad at the same time to see it go.

I had one more corpse of a vehicle to ditch. My local police department had ever so kindly given me extra incentive to do so. They had come by at some point earlier in the week and tagged the Cougar for impound removal in ten days. It's really got to go away. The sooner, the better.