Note to Readers:

ATTENTION—NEW NOTE TO READERS:
If you'd like email notification of the new posts, let us know at gulliver.initiative@gmail.com.

27—The Mechanics

To: Friends and Family
Subject: The Mechanics

With only several days remaining before the drive back to Vegas, my pickup suddenly fell into high distress. The ignition key began sticking. When I did get the truck started, it kept choking. And what had been a slight dwindling of power on hills became more pronounced. Before I left the town of cards, mechanics said the power issue was to be expected with a thirteen-year-old truck that had only four cylinders.

The first mechanic I consulted here was a taut, terse man with a spotless shop. Not a drop of oil anywhere on the floor. Claiming to be swamped, he appeared overwhelmed by nothing. “Battery’s bulging,” he said then directed me to the battery place at the edge of town. “Testing that battery would be a waste of time,” he told me as I was pulling away, then added cryptically, “You have to be smarter than the machine to make it work.” 

At the battery place, Sam hooked up the battery to a machine for testing batteries. “You don’t want to just go putting in a new battery if it’s something else,” he said. 
BAD BATTERY, the battery tester confirmed. 
Ten minutes and sixty-five dollars later, the engine turned over with ease but kept stalling. 

Jane happened to be with me and suggested I call her mechanic, Gary, who told us to drive right over.

Minutes later, we turned off the main highway onto a short road behind Stan’s Auto Parts and the car wash. There, we pulled up in front of a big off-yellow box of a building. Over the small entrance door, a sign said Gary’s Automotive. To the right of the entrance were two large automatic garage doors, both closed. 

The entrance door opened and out sauntered a friendly round-faced man, mid-sixties, not tall but solid in his blue mechanic’s pants and jacket. Gary’s Auto read the black patch on his blue cap. As the clock was closing in on five, I began rattling off my problems. 
Gary listened to my story but then seeing my Nevada plates, began chatting about the time he spent in Reno after his stint at Stead Air Force Base. In a matter of minutes we’d exchanged our migration stories.

Gary had started reminiscing about a fishing incident in Reno when one of the automatic doors across the front of the shop opened. Out rolled a big shiny blue Buick. As we stepped aside, the great blue car swung around into a line of well-worn jeeps and pickups. “The hanger queen,” Gary quipped, then nodded at my Toyota. “Nice rig.” 

Just being referred to as a “rig” seemed to perk up the old truck.

The Buick fell silent, the door opened, and out stepped a slim serious woman in greasy blue overalls and a brown ponytail. Gary’s assistant. Virginia.

Virginia ambled over, lit a cigarette, and took a long hard drag, the kind of drag that makes you wish you smoked. “Wanna pull ‘er in for me,” she said, nodding at the rig.

As I pulled ‘er in, it struck me that this was the first time in my fifty years of driving that while I’d seen men drive there vehicles into a shop, I’d never been invited to do so. 

The shop was dark, cluttered, and greasy but had a feel of homey confidence to it. 
Gary lifted the hood, listened to the motor, then motioned for me to cut the ignition. 
“I think I can fit you in,” he said then fingered some wires to the right and back. “The original spark-plug wires,” he noted.

As Jane called around for a ride back to Netarts, Gary and I chatted about the growth in Reno and Vegas. Virginia came over. “I'm leaving,” she said then did.
It flashed though my mind that if the gunslinging seeker after justice played by Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead had been real, that woman would have been Virginia.

“It’s nice to see a woman in the workforce,” I said to Gary.
He shrugged. “She doesn't drink,” he said, “and she's always on time and willing to learn. The guy I had before was the best mechanic I've ever seen. But he'd wait until I had five jobs piled up then wouldn't show. Had a bad drinking problem. Finally licked it, I think. I’m glad."
“So you’re still friends?” 
“Awh yeah,” Gary said. 

The next morning around ten, my phone rang. “Those old spark-plug wires were part of the problem,” Gary said, “okay for Vegas but not this climate. Same with the battery most likely. But the problem with the key is the tumbler. I called around town for the part but will have to get one overnighted from Portland.”

The next day as I waited for Gary to tally up my bill, Virginia ambled over, cigarette dangling from her lips. “Same thing happened to me,” she said. “That grabby tumbler.” She took a drag and blew the smoke away from me. 
“And we kinda fixed that front bumper,” she mentioned, nodding at the bumper that had been dented to a V when a woman with tailer hookup backed into me. I’d used the four-hundred-dollar insurance check to pay my taxes. 

“How’d you do that?” I exclaimed, running my fingers over what was now barely a shadow of the dent.
“Just pulled on it,” Virginia said. “Not much serious metal in today’s bumper.”
“Thank you,” I said. Virginia shrugged and started back to work.
“You know,” I said, “it's really brave of you a woman entering the world of mechanics.”
Virginia looked into the smoldering end of her cigarette. “It just comes natural,” she said. “My dad owned a junk yard. The brave thing woulda been if I'da jumped off into the secretarial pool.” 

The bill was less than I’d expected. No charge for the bumper.

Back at the cabin, I called to thank Gary again and to report that the old rig took the hill like a sports car.

It was during that zippy ascent that I began to think that brave without “natural” is just another word for all those grand ideas and heartfelt plans that somehow end up creating friction between the moving parts of our lives.

•••••

Post Script: Followers of this blog will know that the story related here is part of a narrative that began in December 1998. It was in the last days of January 1999 that I met Gary and Virginia.
After I moved back to Oregon in May 1999, they kept the rig running well into its seventeeth year when I traded it in for $2,500. The car is way more convenient but lacks the character of the rig. 

Virginia is still keeping cars running smoothly in Tillamook.

Gary passed away in July 2005, and I thank his wife Jackie for the pictures. I’m sure nothing I write can say Gary like the quilt made of all his shirts and Budweiser bathing suit.



No comments:

Post a Comment