OK, here is another story for Fire Week.
We used to have a Pontiac Sunbird we bought from the next door neighbor. I should mention that we used to be really, really poor, at least by my standards. We moved to Northern Virginia in 1988 so Chris could go to work for the Patent Office, and he was making $27,000 a year, and I couldn't find a job because I wasn't a member of the Virginia bar, so we took about a 50% pay cut, and anyway, we had a three year old and a six month old. So we had two cars, Chris' 1976 Audi, that had a terrible electrical system, and my 1978 Pontiac Lemans, that my dad gave me, until some guy without insurance totaled that in a parking lot.
So the guy next door sold me his 1983 Pontiac Sunbird, which is a tiny car, but it ran pretty good, and even handled snow and ice well. But, since we were broke all the time, I used to do my own tuneups, oil changes, and brake jobs. Now, I actually know how to work on cars, or at least I used to before they got so complicated. My dad used to race Porsches and Jaguars as a hobby, and since I was the oldest kid, he used to make me help him, like pump the brake pedal when he was doing a brake job, and hold the light when he was working on the engine, and so forth. And then I worked at Exxon Refinery when the U.S. Government made them hire women, I have posted about that before, we got a lot of training in all kinds of things. And then I had Volkswagens, and learned how to fix them using the Volkswagen Idiot books, the original idiot books, which were very, very good.
So, I had one of those mechanic's guides you get from a bookstore, and was tuning the car, and decided it really needed for me to rebuild the carburetor. I had actually rebuilt a carburetor on a Volkswagen I used to have, so it wasn't a big deal in my mind. So I blithely removed the carburetor, and had it on spreadout newspaper on the dining room table, and was fiddling with it, with a rebuilt kit from the parts shop, you know, it's got new gaskets and whatnot. And Chris was horrified, and started telling me, "you can't rebuild a carburetor!" And I was kinda blowing him off and ignoring him, you know, "yeah, yeah," but he wouldn't let up. For some reason, it really freaked him out. And I tried to explain about how I'd done it before, and he wouldn't let up.
Well, I don't know, I guess I was tired, or grouchy, but I just gave up, and said ok, and went out to reconnect the carburetor, and he's screaming at me the whole time. Which isn't an excuse, but maybe a justification, because I didn't do a careful job. So when I tried the car to see how it did, the engine went *whoooomp* and caught fire. Well, as you can imagine, Chris started shrieking, and either he or me, I don't remember, went inside and called the fire department, and I am pretty sure it was me who got the wool blankets and threw them over the engine and put the fire out. Chris got the fire extinguisher and sprayed it all over my engine. And then the fire department came, and sprayed it some more.
Well, you know what? We couldn't afford another car, and, truth be known, we couldn't even afford to pay someone to fix this one. So I cleaned the fire extinguisher spray off the engine, and determined that it was only the wiring that was ruined, and a few gaskets, and found out, I didn't know this, that automobile engine wiring is all connected into something called a wiring harness.
So, while the kids were napping every day, I'd go out, and bit by bit, disconnect the burned wiring harness, and put little labels on the parts of the car, and eventually I was able to thread back in a replacement wiring harness, and replace the gaskets, and drove the car for a few more years.
It's not always easy being married. |
