As I stood there, evaluating the carcass of the Mule, I had a fellow come
up to me and stand there for a few minutes.
"Okay," says he, "I give up. What is it?"
Says I, "It's a table."
"A table?" he repeated.
"Sure," I answered, "When we go hunting we like to have a sit down meal.
Obviously we're not going to lug a full sized table into the back forty
with us, so I had to find one that would move on its own..."
And then there's the truck. It sits in front of my garage, double chocked,
doors locked, waiting for me to start serious work on it. The neighborhood
kids enjoy coming up to me when I'm tinkering (serious work on the beast
begins this month). They ask questions about it, which allows me to give a
thumbnail history class on the Korean War (we cover the landing at Inchon
next week). They really seem to enjoy hearing about it. They ask some
wonderful questions, which reflect that wonderful innocence of youth:
Where's the air bag?
Where's the CD player?
Where are the seat belts?
Why are the headlights so big?
And then there's the landlord's rich punk son, who seems to have a new
Mercedes every other week, when he isn't tooling around in a new SUV. He
doesn't like the truck because it's ugly. He tried to have it towed from
where it sits because it was "an eyesore". As soon as I heard about it I
called the landlord to find out what was going on, and the landlord said
that he had received word that I had an inoperable vehicle parked out in
front of my house. I told him that I had a 1951 M-37 truck that I was
going to be restoring, but that I had not saved up the money to get it done
yet. At that point, he asked me if I could at least wash the thing and
make it look like it would run. I assured him that getting it roadworthy
was of the HIGHEST priority (the neighborhood kids want to take a ride
around the block), and my youngest boy (all of 5 years old) wants to take
it through the drive through at McDonalds, just like we did with Mister
Davis' truck. He says not to worry about it.
Anyway, the landlord calls his punk kid on his cell phone. I emerge from
the house in time to see the kid answer his phone as the tow truck pulls
up. I hear a yelling coming from the phone, as I watch the tow truck
driver get out of his rig and amble on over. The kid folds up his phone,
looks at the tow truck driver, says, "Forget it." and stalks off.
The tow truck driver stays for another hour or so, seems he drove a later
year M-37 in Viet Nam, and we spend most of the time jaw-jacking about the
Marine Corps and MVs in general.
Gotta love it!
Bill
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